Autonomic responses to stress: the effects of progressive relaxation, the relaxation response, and expectancy of relief.

Forty-eight male subjects with no previous meditative experience engaged in either progressive relaxation (PR), a meditative treatment designed to induce the relaxation response (RR), or a no-treatment control experience (C) during four sessions on consecutive days. Negative expectations regarding the effectiveness of each technique for reducing physiological responses to stress were induced for half of the subjects in each treatment condition, and positive expectations were induced for the other half. Subjects viewed a stressful film following practice of their technique during the first and fourth sessions. Heart rate and electrodermal responding were recorded continuously during practice of the techniques and during the stressful film throughout the first and fourth sessions. Results indicated lowered heart rate levels prior to the film for subjects in the PR-positive expectancy condition and during the film for subjects in the RR-positive expectancy condition. It is suggested that subjects' expectancies concerning meditation may affect cardiovascular responding during stress, although meditative treatments in general do not appear to reduce stress responding as effectively as previously suggested.