Getting individual differences in autonomic reactivity to work for instead of against you: determining the dominant "psychological" stress channel on the basis of a "biological" stress test.

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to develop a procedure to increase the re liability of autonomic measures, such as skin conductance (SC) and heart rate (HR), when assessing negative emotional responding. The strategy was to capitalize on the individual difference factor by determining prior to the start of an experiment each subject's most reactive autonomic channel. To achieve this objective, a “biological” stress test (balloon‐burst test) was used. Subjects were then classified by using a median‐split, rank‐ordered procedure, as high SC responders, high HR responders. high responders in both channels, or low responders in both channels. The generality of the responder‐non‐responder classification was then assessed to a “psychological” stressor which involved presentations of a fear‐eliciting bodily‐injury slide. Transfer effects were obtained with those subjects defined as high responders on a given channel displaying greater reactivity on that channel when compared to subjects classified as low responders. The implications of these findings for clinical research were discussed.