Page 49 - JCBP-3-4

Journal of Clinical and

Basic Psychosomatics

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Affective response accuracy and emotion

regulation influence short-term blood pressure
variability among healthy young adults

1
1
1
Xiao Yang * , Catalina Roldan , Cathryn Gallagher , Katie Heberlein , and
1
Fang Fang 2
1 Department of Psychology, College of Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia,
United States of America
2 Department of Internal Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, Virginia, United States
of America

Abstract
High blood pressure (BP) variability is a modified risk factor for cardiovascular
disease. Short-term BP variability (BPV) has been associated with atypical emotional
processes that are implicated in depression. Moreover, emotion regulation (ER) and
affective perception play important roles in those emotional processes. The present
study aimed to investigate whether ER and the perception of affective stimuli are
associated with short-term BPV in a preclinical population. The sample consisted of
*Corresponding author:
Xiao Yang 54 healthy young adults. Systolic and diastolic BP (SBP and DBP) were recorded using
(yangxff225@gmail.com) a standardized protocol of the upper-arm-cuff approach, and BPV was calculated
Citation: Yang X, Roldan C, as ranges and intra-individual standard deviations (SD) of six measures of SBP and
Gallagher C, Heberlein K, Fang F. DBP. ER was assessed by the ER questionnaire, which provided scores for the habitual
Affective response accuracy and use of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. In addition, a computerized
emotion regulation influence
short-term blood pressure variability affective perception task was used to evaluate the accuracy of affective responses.
among healthy young adults. Multiple regressions were used to test whether ER and emotional response accuracy
J Clin Basic Psychosom. predicted the measures of BPV, and the analyses were controlled for gender and age.
2025;3(4):43-53.
doi: 10.36922/jcbp.8134 Results showed that among participants showing high affective response accuracy,
expressive suppression was positively associated with the intra-individual SD of
Received: December 23, 2024
SBP, whereas cognitive reappraisal was negatively related to the range and SD of
1st revised: February 19, 2025 diastolic BP. Our findings suggest that individual differences in the use of different
2nd revised: March 11, 2025 ER strategies influence BPV, which may account for the negative effect of affective
disorders on cardiovascular health.
Accepted: April 11, 2025
Published online: April 25, 2025
Keywords: Blood pressure variability; Affective response accuracy; Emotion regulation;
Copyright: © 2025 Author(s). Depression; Cardiovascular disease
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, 1. Introduction
provided the original work is
properly cited. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality and disability in the
Publisher’s Note: AccScience world. The direct cost of CVD was estimated at over 800 billion United States (US)
1,2
Publishing remains neutral with dollars globally in 2020, and its global economic costs have been increasing in recent
regard to jurisdictional claims in 3-5
published maps and institutional years. As CVD is a pressing public health challenge, significant research efforts have
affiliations. focused on identifying its risk factors.

Volume 3 Issue 4 (2025) 43 doi: 10.36922/jcbp.8134