Department of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.
Department of Orthopaedics, University Medicine Rostock, Rostock, Germany.
J Psychosom Res. 2018 Mar;106:56-61. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2018.01.005. Epub 2018 Jan 10.
Psychosocial stress is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. Accordingly, there is a growing interest in biomarkers that indicate whether individuals show adaptive (i.e., stress-buffering and health-promoting) or maladaptive (i.e., stress-escalating and health-impairing) stress reactions in social contexts. As heart rate variability (HRV) has been suggested to be a biomarker of adaptive behavior during social encounters, it may be possible that inter-individual differences in HRV are associated with inter-individual differences regarding stress in distinct social domains.
To test this hypothesis, resting state HRV and psychosocial stress was assessed in 83 healthy community-dwelling individuals (age: 18-35years). HRV was derived from heart rate recordings during spontaneous and instructed breathing to assess the robustness of possible associations between inter-individual differences in HRV and inter-individual differences in psychosocial stress. Psychosocial stress was determined with a self-report questionnaire assessing stress in distinct social domains.
A series of categorical and dimensional analyses revealed an association between inter-individual differences in HRV and inter-individual differences in psychosocial stress: Individuals with high HRV reported less stress in social life, but not in family life, work life or everyday life, than individuals with low HRV.
On basis of these findings, it may be assumed that individuals with high HRV experience less psychosocial stress than individuals with low HRV. Although such an assumption needs to be corroborated by further findings, it seems to be consistent with previous findings showing that individuals with high HRV suffer less from stress and stress-related disorders than individuals with low HRV.
心理社会压力与大量的发病率和死亡率有关。因此，人们越来越关注那些能够表明个体在社会环境中表现出适应性（即压力缓冲和促进健康）或不适应性（即压力加剧和损害健康）应激反应的生物标志物。由于心率变异性（HRV）已被认为是社交时适应性行为的生物标志物，因此个体之间 HRV 的差异可能与不同社会领域的个体之间的压力差异有关。
为了验证这一假设，对 83 名健康的社区居民（年龄 18-35 岁）进行静息状态 HRV 和心理社会压力评估。HRV 是从自主和指令呼吸时的心率记录中得出的，以评估 HRV 个体差异与心理社会压力个体差异之间可能存在的关联的稳健性。心理社会压力是通过评估不同社会领域压力的自我报告问卷来确定的。
一系列分类和维度分析表明 HRV 个体差异与心理社会压力个体差异之间存在关联：与 HRV 较低的个体相比，HRV 较高的个体报告在社交生活中压力较小，但在家庭生活、工作生活或日常生活中压力则没有差异。
基于这些发现，可以假设 HRV 较高的个体比 HRV 较低的个体经历较少的心理社会压力。尽管这种假设需要进一步的研究结果来证实，但它似乎与先前的研究结果一致，即 HRV 较高的个体比 HRV 较低的个体较少受到压力和与压力相关的疾病的影响。
