Emotional coping and the psychophysiological substrates of elevated blood pressure

A structured interview concerning emotional coping patterns was administered to 63 28-year-old men included in a psychophysiological study of blood pressure elevation. The interviews were tape recorded and subsequently evaluated by a rater not otherwise involved in the study. The interviews involved discussion of four emotions: anger, sorrow, anxiety, and joy. The results indicate that normotensives can express sorrow to significantly more people than hypertensives, and that their behavior in situations involving sorrow tends to be more instrumental than that of the group with labile pressure. Hypertensives also experienced significantly less joy than normotensives. In multiple regression analyses on physiological variables relevant for blood pressure elevation, the use of a somatic and unfocused way of describing sorrow was associated with significantly lower heart rate. The results show also that emotional coping explains a significant amount of the variance in three of the psychosocial functions involved in elevated blood pressure: ability to express anger at work, plus the social support variables of attachment and acquaintance.