Past Disclosure and Conversational Experience: Effects on Cardiovascular Functioning While Women Talk

Abstract

A sense of self arises through social interaction and discourse, and this process of self‐construction might have physiological correlates. We argue that cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) during communication is related to the salience of subjectivity and self‐construction processes. We expected that the context in which a conversation occurs, the extent of disclosure during talk, and speakers’ conversational histories (past conversational experience and past tendency to disclose) would be related to CVR. Women (N= 44) engaged in talk to either a friend or a stranger about a personally relevant topic. Among low disclosers, extent of disclosure was positively related to CVR, while this effect was reversed for high disclosers. Low disclosers who tend not to disclose much but who usually feel comfortable conversing exhibited the largest cardiovascular responses. The findings highlight the importance of past social behavior and language use for physiological processes.