UC San Diego

We test if brief physical exercise can reduce cardiovascular arousal not just during a psychological stressor, as prior studies suggest, but both before it occurs, when one is anticipating the stressor, and after it occurs, when one is ruminating about it. Including both anticipatory and recovery responses may be more consistent with how individuals use exercise to cope with stress. It is also relevant to an expanded view of the cardiovascular reactivity hypothesis, which suggests that the duration of the stress response, in addition to the magnitude of the initial peak reaction, may contribute to cardiovascular illness. In Study 1, following a mental arithmetic task, some participants did a brief exercise task while others sat still. We found that although exercising after the stressor adds to initial cardiovascular arousal, it goes on to improve recovery afterward. In both Study 2 and Study 3, subjects did a brief exercise task prior to a speech task. Some subjects were told of the speech before the exercise. Study 3 included a delay period after the exercise, so that residual arousal from exercise was no longer present when the speech began. Anticipating the stressor during the exercise did not produce any more, or less, arousal to the stressor than not anticipating it. However, taken together, Study 2 and Study 3 suggest an interaction of delay and exercise; relative to those who do not exercise, no delay between exercise and stress seems to prime the stress response, perhaps due to excitation transfer (Study 2), whereas a delay between exercise and stress attenuates the stress response (Study 3). We also test if the theory of misattribution of arousal can account for the stress attenuating effects of exercise; if an individual can credit some, if not all, of his arousal to positive invigoration from exercise rather than negative tension from a stressor, he may ruminate about the stressor less. However, in Study 4, other neutral tasks did not result in misattribution of arousal, which suggests that while exercise may simply be the best task at causing misattribution of arousal, exercise may instead be a unique activity