Why the study?
How do ethnicity and gender influence cardiovascular responses to active and inhibitory-passive coping challenges in black and white men and women?
Cross-Sectional (n=138)
How do ethnicity and gender influence cardiovascular responses to active and inhibitory-passive coping challenges in black and white men and women?
Black-white differences in physiological responsivity to stress in men may not generalize to women, suggesting environmental and social factors play a role in reactivity differences.
Black men’s lower reactivity to active coping should not alter clinical stress assessment; leaves open gender-ethnicity interactions and social influences on responses.
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to evaluate how black and white men and women responded physiologically to specific laboratory challenges. METHODS: Hemodynamic responses to an active coping (evaluated speaking) and two inhibitory-passive coping (mirror tracing, cold pressor) tasks were examined in 138 black and white men and women. RESULTS: Significant ethnicity by gender interactions occurred for the evaluated speaking task. Black men responded with lower blood pressure, cardiac output or heart rate, or both, than black women, white men, and white women, who did not differ from each other. Black men, relative to the other subgroups, also reported more inhibitory-passive coping, hostility, and pessimism, and less social support. Whites also responded with greater increases in systolic blood pressure during mirror tracing than blacks. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that black-white differences in physiological responsivity obtained for men may have limited generalizability for women. The results also suggest that environmental and social factors rather than genetic or constitutional factors may play a role in black-white reactivity differences.
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Saab et al. (1997) reported a cross-sectional. Ethnicity and gender vs. Between groups (black vs white, men vs women) was evaluated on Hemodynamic responses to active coping and inhibitory-passive coping tasks.
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