Do Behavioral Responses Mediate or Moderate the Relation Between Cardiovascular Reactivity to Stress and Parental History of Hypertension?

To examine whether differences in behavioral responses to stress mediated or moderated the relation between cardiovascular response to stress and parental history of hypertension, 64 healthy undergradu-ates—16 men with hypertensive parents (PH), 16 men without hypertensive parents (PH), 16 PH women, and 16 PH women—participated in a mental arithmetic task, mirror tracing task, and 2 interpersonal role plays. PH participants exhibited higher resting heart rates than PH participants and higher resting systolic blood pressures (SBPs) than PH women. PH participants exhibited greater SBP responses to tasks and engaged in more negative verbal and nonverbal behavior across tasks than PH counterparts. Differences in behavioral responding neither mediated nor moderated the observed relation between parental history status and SBP response to stress. Key words: cardiovascular reactivity, family history of hypertension, interpersonal stress, anger, behavioral responses to stress, heart rate, blood pressure Many studies have examined the relation between parental history of hypertension and exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity to stress (see Muldoon, Terrell, Bunker, & Manuck, 1993). Al-though several investigators have reported exaggerated heart rate or blood pressure responses to mental stress among offspring o