Social anxiety and cardiovascular responses to an evaluative speaking task: The role of stressor anticipation

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Abstract

This study investigated the influence of trait social anxiety and a task-preceding anticipation period on cardiovascular reactivity to and recovery from an evaluative speaking task requiring persuasive behavior. Fifty-six normotensive female students characterized as either high or low in trait social anxiety engaged in Preparation and Performance of a speech either in the context of a preceding anticipatory period or a prolonged neutral rest period. Social anxiety exerted a substantial influence on cardiovascular responses during task exposure. High socially anxious individuals overall exhibited lower blood pressure and heart rate reactivity compared to low anxious individuals. For heart rate stressor anticipation strengthened this response tendency particularly during Speech Performance. These cardiovascular effects seem to indicate reduced task engagement of socially anxious individuals in situations exceeding perceived coping ability. The anticipatory period, in general, was found to accelerate cardiovascular recovery for systolic blood pressure and heart rate. This effect was partly mediated by level of anticipatory negative affect.

Introduction

Research on the cardiovascular effects of trait social anxiety in evaluative task conditions has produced rather heterogeneous results. Consistent with theoretical models (Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) several studies found social anxiety to be accompanied by enhanced cardiovascular reactivity (Burns, 1995, Feldman et al., 2004, Gramer and Huber, 1992, Larkin et al., 1998, Turner et al., 1986), but there is also considerable evidence indicating no differences in cardiovascular effects between high and low socially anxious individuals (Baggett et al., 1996, Edelman and Baker, 2002, Grossman et al., 2001, Mauss et al., 2003, Mauss et al., 2004, Wilhelm et al., 2001), furthermore, some data suggest that very demanding interpersonal situations might elicit reduced reactivity in socially anxious individuals (Gramer, 2006). With few exceptions (Feldman et al., 2004) the noted cardiovascular effects of trait social anxiety could not be attributed to experienced affective arousal.

Attempts to explain these inconsistent cardiovascular findings have to consider that social anxiety research has mainly utilized stressors which might be defined as active coping tasks (Obrist, 1981), such as preparation and performance of speeches or mental arithmetic. Active performance situations tend to provoke marked beta-adrenergically mediated increases in cardiovascular activity with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and/or heart rate (HR) being most reliably affected (Wright, 1996). Simultaneous elevations in diastolic blood pressure (DBP) have also been observed (Gendolla, 1999, Wright et al., 2003), though. These myocardial effects are considered to reflect energy mobilization or effort to facilitate coping with situational demands (Obrist, 1981) and they seem largely unrelated to affective arousal experienced during task exposure (Gendolla, 1999).

Research on energization (for a review see Wright, 1996) indicates that exerted effort in active performance situations corresponds to subjective task difficulty as long as success is perceived as possible or worthwhile. Furthermore, ability perceptions can be expected to exert a moderating influence by enhancing subjective task demand for low-ability subjects. A recent study by Gramer and Saria (2007) indicates that ability analysis might also be of relevance for social anxiety research. Socially anxious individuals who are characterized by impaired ability perceptions and negative self-evaluations (Mansell and Clark, 1999, Rapee and Heimberg, 1997) were found to exhibit enhanced blood pressure responses at low levels of evaluative threat. At high threat levels no group differences were observed due to a response attenuation in high compared to low socially anxious individuals. Thus, the observed lack of differential cardiovascular reactivity or reduced responsivity of socially anxious individuals might result from a reduction or abandonment of effort in situations exceeding perceived coping ability. Heightened reactivity of socially anxious individuals may only be obtained as long as both groups view success as possible.

To date research on trait social anxiety has largely focused on cardiovascular responses during task presentation. There were few efforts to evaluate the influence of stressor anticipation on subsequent reactivity (Davidson, Marshall, Tomarken, & Henriques, 2000), although there is growing evidence of systematic differences in mental processes between high and low socially anxious individuals prior to a stressful social event. Whereas socially anxious individuals tend to utilize potentially problematic strategies (i.e. retrieval of negative information, thoughts about ways in which to avoid the situation), low anxious individuals seem to engage in self-enhancing processes more strongly (Clark and Wells, 1995, Hinrichsen and Clark, 2003, Mansell and Clark, 1999). Thus, anticipatory processing might have a differential influence on subsequent task engagement in demanding conditions by strengthening inhibitory tendencies (Gramer, 2006, Gramer and Saria, 2007) in socially anxious individuals.

A main purpose of the present study therefore was to further evaluate the effects of stressor anticipation on cardiovascular and psychological responses in high and low socially anxious individuals. A speech stressor with strong evaluative features was presented either in the context of a preceding anticipatory period or in the context of a prolonged neutral rest period. An explicit comparison of cardiovascular activity during anticipation and standard rest periods has not been performed for social anxiety, previously. This strategy has been utilized in the assessment of cognitive processes during anticipation of a stressful social event, though (Mansell & Clark, 1999). Drawing from research on anticipatory processing in social anxiety (Clark and Wells, 1995, Hinrichsen and Clark, 2003, Mansell and Clark, 1999) and contributions on energization in active performance situations (Wright, 1996) stressor anticipation was expected to reduce task engagement of socially anxious individuals in an evaluative task condition resulting in lower cardiac activity or less pronounced effects in SBP and/or HR (Eubanks et al., 2002, Gramer, 2006) compared to nonanxious individuals.

Theoretical contributions emphasize the importance of stressor anticipation (Brosschot, Gerin, & Thayer, 2006). To date, little is known about the cardiovascular effects of this stressor period, however. Stressor anticipation constitutes a psychological demand without action affordances. It primarily seems to elicit vascular activity, indicated by elevations in blood pressure (BP) but not HR (Gregg, James, Matyas, & Thorsteinsson, 1999) and was found to enhance state anxiety (Mansell & Clark, 1999). Considering information on cognitive processing (Clark and Wells, 1995, Hinrichsen and Clark, 2003) this distress pattern might be more pronounced in high socially anxious individuals. As the duration of stress-induced cardiovascular reactivity mainly seems to depend on the experience of distress emotions (Glynn, Christenfeld, & Gerin, 2002), socially anxious individuals might also be expected to exhibit delayed poststress recovery. Previous research did not observe differential effects (Baggett et al., 1996, Gramer and Saria, 2007, Mauss et al., 2003), however. The present study evaluated the potential influence of an anticipation period in this respect.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 56 normotensive female students who completed the study in exchange for course credit. The Social Anxiety Scale (SAP) developed by Lück (1971) was used for selection. Subjects were assigned to a 2 (Social Anxiety) by 2 (Anticipation) design on the basis of a median split of the final distribution of test scores. Half of each social anxiety group performed the task with an anticipation period (Mhigh = 13.57, SD = 2.88; Mlow = 7.14, SD = 3.23; ns = 14); the other half performed the task

Cognitive appraisals

Significant effects were obtained for the demand-to-resource ratio, only. ANOVAs revealed a Social Anxiety main effect, F(1, 52) = 5.41; p = 0.02, η2 = 0.09, indicating that in high socially anxious participants demand appraisals exceeded appraisals of coping resources (1.44), whereas in low socially anxious participants resources met demands (1.01). Appraisals of difficulty did not differ significantly across high and low socially anxious individuals (Ms 4.64 vs. 4.14, respectively).

Emotional experiences

ANOVAs performed

Discussion

The cardiovascular effects of the anticipation period agree with previous research (Gregg et al., 1999) suggesting elevations in BP rather than HR. It should be noted that baseline levels, in general, slightly increased over time. This is not an uncommon observation (Kelsey et al., 2000) and may indicate that a time period of 10 min is sufficient to establish a stable baseline. Stressor anticipation was also characterized by heightened negative emotions. Contrary to expectations derived from

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