Patterns of cardiovascular responses during angry, sad, and happy emotional recall tasks

Abstract

Research on emotions and cardiovascular (CV) functioning has focused mainly on reactivity, and suggests that different emotions result in different patterns of reactivity. The purpose of this study was to determine whether different emotions are also associated with different patterns of CV recovery. A total of 32 participants wrote about angry, happy, and sad emotional experiences while having their systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) measured. Consistent with prior research, our results suggest that patterns of CV reactivity and recovery differ between positive and negative emotions. Specifically, we found that sadness elicited significant differences in patterns of CV reactivity and recovery compared to happiness, whereas anger did not.