engleski

Traits of Anxiety, Angry Hostility and Depression Predict Parasympathetic Activity during Negative but not Positive Emotion

High frequency heart rate variability (HF HRV) as the indicator of parasympathetic activation / vagal tone (VT) has been measured in 92 female participants during the presentation of two movie clips aimed to induce positive and negative emotion and during one neutral clip. HF HRV (0.15-0.4 Hz) during each movie clip has been extracted. Traits of anxiety, angry hostility and depression have been measured with NEO-PI-R questionnaire. Subjective experience of positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) have been measured immediately after the emotion induction. Presence of the facial expression of PA and NA has been estimated by independent observers on the basis of simple coding system. Results have shown that HF-HRV has been significantly higher during the induction of positive emotion compared to neutral state and more facial expression of PA positively correlated with VT. Higher subjective experience of NA was related to decreases in VT during the induction of NA. Traits of anxiety, angry hostility and depression predict VT during negative but not during positive and neutral movie clip. In addition, only trait anxiety predicted changes in VT from neutral to negative movie clip. The results are explained in the context of the Polyvagal Theory and the model of neurovisceral integration.

emotion induction; vagal tone; vagal reactivity; trait anxiety; hostility; depressiveness

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