Social Anxiety and Cardiovascular Responses to Interpersonal Communication

This study reports data on the relationship of heart rate and blood pressure to state and trait social anxiety. Findings support the prediction that high trait anxiety subjects evidence a correlation between physiological measures and social anxiety. Measures of heart rate in both resting and talking periods correlate with state anxiety among high trait anxiety subjects. By contrast, systolic blood pressure during the talking period correlates with social anxiety for all subjects. These results confirm predictions about the psychosomatics of speech anxiety and demonstrate the importance of studying blood pressure