Self-enhancement and cardiovascular reactivity: limitations of the hemodynamic profile-compensation deficit (HP-CD) model of blood pressure regulation.

We examined the consistency of results obtained when examining the relationship between self-enhancement and cardiovascular reactivity via analysing raw cardiovascular data and compared this with the hemodynamic profile-compensation deficit (HP-CD) model of blood pressure regulation (James et al., 2012) method. A sample of 112 male participants underwent a computer-based task three times in three weeks. Our results indicate that significant results for self-enhancement and hemodynamic cardiovascular reactivity found using raw cardiovascular data were non-significant when HP-CD model was used. Furthermore, the HP-CD model also obfuscates significant baseline changes with reactivity. We also found that the correlations between blood pressure reactivity and hemodynamic processes obtained in the laboratory setting was reduced rather than enhanced with the use of the HP-CD model. Our results suggest that the HP-CD model should be used cautiously and could contribute to inconsistent results when examining the role of psychological factors in biological outcomes.