Psychological stress may be a risk factor for essential hypertension. While several variables have been implicated as mediators or moderators of the relationship between stress and high blood pressure, their exact roles and level of importance remain to be elucidated. A key moderating variable may be family history of hypertension. A series of five studies examined the cardiovascular and emotional reactions to stress of normotensive individuals with and without a parental history of hypertension. In an attempt to facilitate the generalizability of the results, the studies used stressors with greater ecological validity than those used in most previous studies of this topic. This aspect of the research aided the examination of a possible mediator of group differences in cardiovascular reactivity, i.e., emotionality. Several studies observed significant group differences in cardiovascular reactivity to stress, suggesting that stress may be more likely to contribute to the development of hypertension in those with a genetic predisposition for the disorder. However, the exaggerated cardiovascular responsivity of individuals with a parental history of hypertension did not appear to be mediated by greater trait or state emotionality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.34497 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Adler, Perry S. J. |
| Contributors | Ditto, Blaine (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001618541, proquestno: NQ36949, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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