Cardiac stress reactivity and recovery of novelty seekers.

BACKGROUND Novelty seeking temperament has been associated with higher coronary heart disease risk factors, but the mechanism behind the association is open. Cardiac stress response is a potential candidate. PURPOSE Cardiac stress reactivity and recovery was studied in 29 healthy subjects (aged 22-37 years) scoring extremely high (n = 16) or extremely low (n = 13) on temperamental dimension of novelty seeking. METHOD Heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and pre-ejection period were measured during challenging tasks. Differences in cardiac reactivity and recovery between the novelty seeking groups were examined with repeated-measures and univariate analyses. RESULTS The main finding was that stress reactivity did not differ between high and low novelty seeking groups, but high novelty seekers tended to show faster recovery, which is likely to be parasympathetically mediated. CONCLUSION The findings suggest that high novelty seekers may be more stress resilient because they might have faster cardiac recovery after stress. Cardiac stress reactivity seems not to be among the explaining factors for the association between novelty seeking and coronary heart disease risk factors.