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Older Adults' Hemodynamic Responses to an Acute Emotional Stressor: Short Report

Background/Study Context: Vascular and myocardial activation can each increase blood pressure responses to stressors, but vascular responses are uniquely associated with negative affect, pernicious coping processes, and cardiovascular risk. These hemodynamic correlates of coping in response to acute stressors have not been well characterized in older adults. Methods: Adults 65 to 97 years of age (N = 74) either engaged in written disclosure about a distressing event (acute stressor) or wrote objectively about a neutral topic (control). Blood pressure, impedance cardiography, and affect measures were assessed at baseline and in response to writing. Moderating effects of age on affect, blood pressure, and vascular and myocardial responses to the acute stressor were tested using multiple linear regression models. Results: Follow-up tests of Age × Writing Group interactions indicated that the expected effects of written disclosure on systolic and diastolic blood pressure responses were diminished with increasing age. Regardless of age, compared with neutral writing, written disclosure increased negative affect and vascular responses, but not myocardial responses. Conclusion: Blood pressure responses to an acute, emotionally evocative stressor were indistinguishable from blood pressure responses to a control condition among the eldest older adults in our sample. In contrast, characterizing the hemodynamic mechanisms of blood pressure responses revealed notable vascular effects of the acute, emotional stressor across a wide age range. Such characterization may be particularly useful for clarifying the psychophysiological pathways to older adults’ cardiovascular health.