Avoidant Personality Disorder Symptoms and Cardiovascular Reactivity to Psychological Stress Tasks With Increasing Cognitive Demands

Abstract. This study aimed to investigate whether and how avoidant personality disorder symptoms are related to cardiovascular reactivity to stress tasks with different levels of cognitive demands. The revised Chinese edition of the avoidant personality disorder subscale of Personality Diagnosed Questionnaire-4+ (PDQ-4+) was administered to 222 undergraduate students randomly assigned to psychological stress tasks (i.e., mental arithmetic tasks) with low, moderate, or high cognitive demands (manipulated by task difficulty), during which their physiological data were continuously collected. Results showed that avoidant personality disorder symptoms and cognitive demands of tasks interactively predicted systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) reactivity. In specific, avoidant personality disorder symptoms were not associated with SBP reactivity under the low- and moderate-demand conditions and DBP reactivity under the low-demand condition but were associated with blunted SBP reactivity under the high-demand condition and blunted DBP reactivity under the moderate- and high-demand conditions. These findings indicate that the association between avoidant personality disorder symptoms and cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress is contingent on the cognitive demands of tasks, which have potential implications for physical health.