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Hostility, testosterone, and vascular reactivity to stress: Effects of sex

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Abstract

This study investigated the association of personality with cardiovascular stress reactivity (CVR) in men and women. Also, the degree to which testosterone and estradiol reactivity were related to personality and CVR measures was examined. Twenty-six men and 44 women completed the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the .Spielberger Trait Anxiety Inventory before speech, Stroop. and math stress. Testosterone (men) and estradiol (subset of women) were sampled once after an initial rest period and again after the last stressor. Cardiovascular reactivity, including cardiac output and total peripheral resistance (TPR), was assessed during stressors. For men, testosterone increased significantly with stress, and testosterone reactivity to stressors was significantly correlated with hostility. However, stepwise multiple regression revealed that hostility was the only independent predictor of CVR to speech, math, and Stroop stress in men, accounting for 13%–32% of the variance in TPR. Baseline systolic blood pressure explained 22% of the variance in TPR reactivity to speech preparation. No evidence was obtained to suggest that hostility, depressive mood, or anxiety predicted CVR in women, and estradiol did not show slress-sensitive effects. These data provide evidence that increased vascular reactivity may he one mechanism linking hostility to increased cardiovascular mortality in men and support the notion that hostility may have different implications for CVR in women.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, The University of North Carolina, CB 7175, 27599, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Susan S. Girdler

  2. Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, lrvine, CA, USA

    Larry D. Jamner

  3. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    David Shapiro

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  1. Susan S. Girdler
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  2. Larry D. Jamner
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  3. David Shapiro
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This research was supported by Research Grant IRT 0205 from the University of California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program and by National Institutes of Health Grams NS-34143 and MH-51246.

We thank Rachelle Soles and Jon Clark for their expert assistance with all aspects of data collecton and data editing, and Dot Faulkner for her invaluable help with manuscript preparation.

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Girdler, S.S., Jamner, L.D. & Shapiro, D. Hostility, testosterone, and vascular reactivity to stress: Effects of sex. Int. J. Behav. Med. 4, 242–263 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327558ijbm0403_4

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