Negative emotions and acute physiological responses to stress

One pathway through which stressor's are thought to influence physiology is through their effects on emotion. We used meta-analytic statistical techni ques with data from nine studies to test the effects of acute laboratory st ressors (speech, star mirror-image tracing, handgrip) on emotional (undiffe rentiated negative emotion, angel, anxiety) and cardiovascular (CV) respons e. In all of the studies, participants responded to stressors with both inc reased CV response and increased negative emotion. Increases in negative em otion were associated with increases in CV response across tasks, however t hese associations were small. The range of variance accounted for was betwe en 2% and 12%. Thus, the contribution of negative emotion, as assessed in t hese studies, to physiological responses to acute laboratory stressors was limited. Although these results raise questions about the role of emotion i n mediating stress-elicited physiological responses, the nature of the acut e laboratory stress paradigm may contribute to the lack of a strong associa tion.