Essential Hypertension and Social Coping Behavior: Experimental Findings

The present study investigated the hypothesis that mild hypertensives display a distinctive response pattern to interpersonal stress that includes: inadequate social skills, negative cognitive set and cardiovascular hyperreactivity. After completing a set of questionnaires measuring anxiety and cognitive style, subjects monitored interpersonal stress in the natural environment. Following this, blood pressure and heart rate were recorded while subjects interacted with trained role-players in two types of role-play situations: individualized high distress and low distress situations. Hypertensives reported comparable anxiety and were evaluated as equally skilled when compared to normotensives. The cognitive reaction pattern however, discriminated between the groups with hypertensives perceiving less stress and displaying a 'repressive-defensive' cognitive style. Hypertensives displayed a hyperresponse on systolic blood pressure but not on heart rate. With regard to diastolic pressure, controls reacted according to prediction with high distress situations resulting in greater diastolic change than low distress situations. Hypertensives, however, showed the reverse of this pattern with no increase in diastolic pressure during the high distress situations.