Anger, negative emotions, and cardiovascular reactivity during interpersonal conflict in women

Objective: In order to evaluate the relationship between women's subjective emotional discomfort with anger and cardiovascular responses to stress, ca rdiovascular and affective responses were examined during two anger-provoki ng conditions: one in which anger would be in self-defense, and one in whic h anger would be in defense of a significant other. Methods: A total of 42 healthy, normotensive women aged 18-35 years recruited a close female frien d to participate in the study with them, and were randomly assigned to one of two harassment conditions: (i) Self-Harass, where women were harassed wh ile per-forming a math task; (ii) Friend-Harass, where women witnessed a cl ose female friend being harassed while their friend performed a math task. Results: Self-Harass and Friend-Harass women reported feeling equally angry , annoyed, and irritated (all P's < .01) during their respective anger-prov ocation conditions. However, Self-Harass women reported experiencing signif icantly greater increases in feelings of depression and guilt during anger provocation (P's < .05) relative to Friend-Harass women. Interestingly, it was also the Self-Harass women who exhibited significantly greater elevatio ns in heart rate (HR), cardiac output (CO), systolic blood pressure (SBP), forearm blood flow (FBF), and significant reductions in forearm vascular re sistance (FVR; P's < .001) relative to Friend-Harass women during anger pro vocation. Conclusions: Results suggest that women may experience other nega tive emotions (e.g., guilt, depression) when anger is in self-defense relat ive to when it is in defense of others, and that these emotions may play a more important role than anger in moderating cardiovascular reactivity (CVR ) during interpersonal conflict. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.