Perceived stress and ambulatory blood pressure dipping for young adults: The buffering roles of childhood socioeconomic status and engagement in self-selected leisure activities

Perceived stress (PSS) has been associated with lack of night time blood pressure (BP) decline (i.e., \u3c 10% dip in BP from day to night); which in turn increases future cardiovascular risks. Yet high childhood socioeconomic status (SES; i.e., highest parent education) predicts decreased future risk for cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, novel stress management techniques with a self-selected focus have benefits for daily BP control. In particular, self-selected leisure activities (or SSLAs) are intrinsically enjoyable, distracting and self-enhancing recreational pursuits that occur during non-work time activities (e.g., a brisk walk or reading a page-turning novel) and help modulate daily BP control and moods. Thus, we hypothesized that PSS would be linked with less nighttime BP decline at lower SES…BUT that this trend would be weaker on a day in which one does an SSLA, versus another day when not doing an SSLA. 23 healthy young adults (75.8% female; 69.7% White) completed a 1-hour online survey of psychosocial measures and then visited our psychophysiology laboratory twice within roughly one week to have field BP monitored over 24 hours each time. Hierarchical regression tests showed that on the day in which one did an SSLA there was a marginally significant two-way effect for PSS and SES with nighttime BP decline [Fchange(1, 17) = 3.26; p \u3c .089]. At high SES, more perceived stress was associated with more night time dipping [r(14) = +.581; p \u3c .029]. Whereas at low SES, perceived stress was not significantly related to night time BP dipping [r(11) = -.479; p \u3c .136]. On the non-SSLA day that two-way effect was not significant [Fchange(1, 18) = .869; p \u3c .364]. Thus, SSLAs may be a uniquely powerful stress reduction tool for more privileged young adults, but more work needs to uncover the protective factors for less privileged persons