TY - JOUR
T1 - Sex differences in cardiovascular reactivity to physical appearance and performance challenges
AU - Stroud, Laura R.
AU - Niaura, Raymond S.
AU - Stoney, Catherine M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a T-32 fellowship from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Laura Stroud and a grant from the National Institutes of Health (HL48363) to Raymond Niaura and Catherine Stoney.
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - We examined sex differences in cardiovascular reactivity to a novel body image speech task and to three performance-oriented challenges: serial subtraction, handgrip, and mirror tracing tasks. Forty-nine men and 64 women completed the four tasks while heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure were measured. The speech was perceived as requiring more emotionality and empathy for success, whereas the performance tasks were perceived as requiring greater competitiveness. As predicted, women showed greater heart rate reactivity to the body image speech, but men showed greater blood pressure reactivity to the subtraction, grip, and mirror tracing tasks. Results underscore the importance of contextual factors in influencing sex differences in stress responses; women may be more physiologically vulnerable to challenges in the domain of physical appearance, whereas men may react to competitive, performance-oriented challenges.
AB - We examined sex differences in cardiovascular reactivity to a novel body image speech task and to three performance-oriented challenges: serial subtraction, handgrip, and mirror tracing tasks. Forty-nine men and 64 women completed the four tasks while heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure were measured. The speech was perceived as requiring more emotionality and empathy for success, whereas the performance tasks were perceived as requiring greater competitiveness. As predicted, women showed greater heart rate reactivity to the body image speech, but men showed greater blood pressure reactivity to the subtraction, grip, and mirror tracing tasks. Results underscore the importance of contextual factors in influencing sex differences in stress responses; women may be more physiologically vulnerable to challenges in the domain of physical appearance, whereas men may react to competitive, performance-oriented challenges.
KW - Cardiovascular reactivity
KW - Performance
KW - Physical appearance
KW - Sex differences
KW - Stress
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U2 - 10.1207/S15327558IJBM0803_6
DO - 10.1207/S15327558IJBM0803_6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0034793817
SN - 1070-5503
VL - 8
SP - 240
EP - 250
JO - International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
JF - International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
IS - 3
ER -