Religiosity, spirituality, and cardiovascular responses to acute psychological stress

Religiosity and spirituality have both been associated with cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress; however, findings across studies have been inconsistent, and it remains unclear whether these associations are distinct from one another. This study examined the independent relationships of religiosity and spirituality with cardiovascular responses to stress.

A sample of 221 healthy young adults who completed psychometric measures of religious identification and daily spiritual experiences, before undergoing a standardised stress-testing protocol. Systolic, diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) and heart rate (HR) were monitored throughout. Hierarchical regressions analyses were conducted to examine association between religiosity, spirituality, and cardiovascular reactivity.

Daily spiritual experiences were positively associated with HR reactivity at the uncorrected level, but not with SBP or DBP reactivity. After controlling for religious identification, daily spiritual experiences were also positively associated with SBP, DBP, and HR reactivity in uncorrected analyses. However, none of these associations remained statistically significant following false discovery rate correction.

These findings provide limited evidence for associations between daily spiritual experiences and cardiovascular reactivity, with observed effects not remaining significant following adjustment for multiple comparisons. Overall, the results do not support robust associations between spirituality and cardiovascular reactivity in this sample.