PSYCHOPHYSICAL STRESS REACTIONS DURING AN ANALYTICALLY ORIENTED INTERVIEW

In 37 young volunteers analytically oriented interviews were taken and their effects being compared to those of conventional stressors using mental arithmetics. Because of their similarity to day-to-day stresso rs we expected higher cardiovascular reactions (blood pressure, heart rate and catecholamines) under interview situations than in mental ari thmetics. Conforming this hypothesis, we found higher reactions in blo od pressure regulation, while heart rates were not higher under interv iew situations compared to laboratory stressors. Epinephrine showed a qualitative difference: Only in interview situations we found a signif icant rise of 27 %. Plasma cortisol also showed a rise in interview si tuations, however, smaller. We therefore suggest, that analytically or iented interviews are an adequate method to investigate cardiovascular reagibility in young hypertensive-prone persons.