Dampened emotion recognition from bodily gestures: Evidence for sex-specific cardiovascular emotional dampening among prehypertensive and hypertensive individuals

Objectives

Cardiovascular emotional dampening has been reported not just in normotensive individuals but also in prehypertensive and hypertensive individuals as reduced accuracy/response time/both of emotion recognition from facial photographs/videos, audios, and affect-inducing scenes with elevation in blood pressure (BP). This study explored if this phenomenon is manifested among low BP (or hypotensive) individuals and in recognition of emotions from bodily gestures. Further, sex-specific differences in BP-associated emotional dampening were also explored.

Materials and methods

Using a cross-sectional group comparison research design, Asian Indian participants belonging to middle socioeconomic status were recruited for participation. The classification of the participants into different BP groups was done on the basis of the criteria laid down by the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure for adults aged 18 and older. The study assessed the participants on an emotional matching task (matching a target emotional face to the correct bodily gesture) and an emotional labelling task (labelling the emotion expressed in bodily gestures). A mixed-design ANCOVA was conducted, with BP groups and sex (male, female) as between-groups factors, and inverse efficiency score (calculated by combining speed and accuracy of emotion recognition into one variable) on both the tasks as within-groups factor, with age and education as covariates.

Results

Data from a total of 148 participants [hypotensives (n = 23), normotensives (n = 59), prehypertensives (n = 35), and hypertensives (n = 31)] were analysed. Mixed-design ANCOVA revealed a significant BP group × Task × Sex interaction. Notably, prehypertensive and hypertensive BP elevation produces more emotional dampening in females than males in emotional labelling but not matching. Moreover, while hypertensive females show explicit emotion recognition difficulties (labelling emotions), hypertensive males show decline in both implicit (matching emotions) and explicit emotion recognition, compared to other BP groups. Dampening was not evident for hypotensives.

Conclusion

The findings add significantly to expanding the growing literature on cardiovascular emotional dampening and can be used to design distinct therapeutic interventions to improve both implicit and explicit emotion recognition for hypertensive males but just explicit emotion recognition for hypertensive females. Females with higher-than-normal BP need to be targeted more for emotion recognition interventions than males.