Gender-specific effects of trait anxiety on the cardiac defense response

Abstract

This study examined the association between trait anxiety and the reactivity of the defensive motivational system, as indexed by the cardiac defense response (CDR) to an unexpected, intense noise, in a mixed-gender undergraduate sample. Gender-specific effects were observed: only women showed an association between trait anxiety and the CDR, consisting of a more intense, prompter, and durable defensive response in high-anxious women. This association was not evident during the first component of the defensive response — identified as an attentional process of stimulus rejection — but in later components reflecting attentional orienting and motivational processes of energetic mobilization for setting an active defensive response — which might suggest reduced parasympathetic dominance along with increased sympathetic dominance. These findings in an unselected sample are consistent with the proposal of a more reactive defensive motivational system as a potential vulnerability factor towards anxiety manifestations in women.