Comment on “negative emotions and acute cardiovascular responses to laboratory challenges”

Abstract

Feldman et al. (1) analyzed data from several studies and found only small associations between cardiovascular responses and self-reported emotional responses to laboratory They concluded that emotions play a small role in physiological responses to acute laboratory stressors. We believe this conclusion is premature. The connection between emotionality and cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) can be examined at the level of tasks (Do tasks that produce strong emotions also produce large cardiovascular reactions?) and at the level of individual differences (Are people who show large emotional responses to a given task the same ones who show large cardiovascular reactions?). Feldman et al. (1) consider only the latter issue. We leave the discussion of the former to the accompanying commentary by Schwartz (2) (though we note that the difference between a resting baseline and, for example, an anger-recall or shock-threat task is the level of emotionality, and this has profound consequences for CVR [3,4]). Even if limited to the examination of individual differences, the data presented by Feldman et al. (1) are not conclusive. The studies they review used star mirror-tracing, speech, and handgrip as the laboratory The use of such tasks limits the conclusions in two ways. First, the chosen tasks do not involve very powerful emotional interventions. Handgrip and star mirrortracing are not tasks one would choose if one were interested in emotional responses, and even a speech task need not be highly emotional. (Along these lines, we note that Table 3 of the paper shows that in only 3 of the 16 cases was the average of self-reported negative emotionality above the midpoint--moder-