Effects Of Different Motivational Intensities On Cardiovascular Recovery From Stress

Emotion plays an important role in physical health,of which the major aspect is cardiovascular health.Exploring the association between affect and cardiovascular recovery from stress,which contribute to reveal the internal physiological mechanism of the effect of affect on cardiovascular health.The existing studies mainly manipulated the valence dimension of affect and ignored the role of motivational dimension,when investigating the influence of affect on stress cardiovascular recovery.It remains to be examined whether state high and low approach-motivated positive affects equally speed cardiovascular recovery after stress,and whether state high and low withdrawalmotivated negative affects equally prolong cardiovascular recovery after stress.Previous studies on different motivational intensity affects mainly focused on state level,while trait level received limited attention.Sensation seeking and anxiety are the personality traits related to approach and withdrawal motivation respectively,thus the effect of state approach-motivated positive affect on stress cardiovascular recovery might be modulated by trait approach-motivated positive affect assessed by sensation seeking,and the effect of state withdrawal-motivated negative affect on stress cardiovascular recovery might be modulated by trait withdrawal-motivated negative affect assessed by anxiety.In the present study,motivational dimension and trait level were introduced to make more detailed classification of affect,which can comprehensively reveal a series of effects different types of positive affect and negative affect have on physiological health-relevant processes,enrich and perfect the research of neurophysiology on affect,and provide positive intervention implications for using affect to optimize health and well-being.In this study,two independent experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of trait and state approach-motivated positive affects,and trait and state withdrawalmotivated negative affects on cardiovascular recovery from stress(public speaking),respectively.The two experiments both used a 3 × 2 between-subjects experimental design.In Experiment 1,state approach-motivated positive affect(high approach motivation,neutral,low approach motivation)and sensation seeking(lower,higher based on median split)were taken as between-subject variables,and cardiovascular(heart rate,systolic blood pressure,diastolic blood pressure)recovery(change scores)was taken as a dependent variable.In Experiment 2,state withdrawal-motivated negative affect(high withdrawal motivation,neutral,low withdrawal motivation)and anxiety(lower,higher based on median split)were taken as between-subject variables,and cardiovascular recovery was taken as a dependent variable.During post-stress period,both experiments induced state motivational intensity affect by affective pictures.In Experiment 1,subjects were randomly assigned to watch appetitive food pictures(eliciting state high approachmotivated positive affect),beautiful landscape pictures(eliciting state low approachmotivated positive affect),and neutral pictures of objects(cup,chair,etc.).In Experiment 2,subjects were randomly assigned to watch threatening animal pictures(eliciting state high withdrawal-motivated negative affect),environmental pollution and disease pictures(eliciting state low withdrawal-motivated negative affect),and neutral pictures of objects.In the study,a series of 3 × 2 between-subjects ANOVAs were used to test the effects of trait and state motivational intensity affects on cardiovascular recovery after stress,and the results were as follows:(1)The results of Experiment 1 showed that compared to neutral state and state low approach-motivated positive affect,state high approach-motivated positive affect prolonged stress heart rate recovery.Moreover,individuals low in sensation seeking exhibited delayed stress systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure recovery under state high approach-motivated positive affect condition relative to state low approach-motivated positive affect and neutral conditions.Individuals high in sensation seeking exhibited comparable stress blood pressure recovery across the three conditions.(2)The results of Experiment 2 showed that compared to neutral state and state low withdrawal-motivated negative affect,state high withdrawal-motivated negative affect prolonged stress heart rate recovery.In addition,individuals low in anxiety exhibited delayed stress heart rate,systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure recovery under state high withdrawal-motivated negative affect condition relative to state low withdrawal-motivated negative affect and neutral conditions.Individuals high in anxiety exhibited comparable stress heart rate and blood pressure recovery across the three conditions.The above results suggest that the association between affect and stress cardiovascular recovery is contingent on motivational intensity,which might have different health implications.These findings support the core assumption of the motivational dimensional model of affect that approach-withdrawal motivation is necessary to explain differences between the effects of emotions on physiology and behavior and extend the evidence to cardiovascular physiology.