Effects of Coping on Blood Pressure Responses to Threat of Aversive Stimulation

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine effects on systolic and diastolic blood pressure due to availability and difficulty of control over anticipated aversive auditory stimulation. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, 44 subjects were presented either of two instructional sets regarding control: a) that exposure to the aversive stimulus would be contingent on the subject's performance at a cognitive task (Control), or b) that the stimulus would occur at random during the task period (No Control). The experimental task consisted of problems in concept formation and was presented to Control and No Control subjects at either of two levels of difficulty (Difficult or Easy); task success was manipulated by the experimenter to assure equivalent performance across groups. Results indicated that within the Task Difficult condition, Control subjects evidenced greater systolic blood pressure elevations than subjects in the No Control group, whereas Control and No Control subjects in the Task Easy condition showed no reliable differences. Diastolic blood pressure did not vary by control or task difficulty. It was concluded that the availability of control responses may induce greater arousal in situations involving threat of aversive stimulation, but that this effect obtains only when subjects experience some degree of difficulty employing available coping strategies.