Habituation of anger revisited: Magnitude and duration of cardiovascular response following repeated emotional activation

The purpose of the present study was to investigate habituation of self-report and cardiovascular responses to anger imagery. Forty-nine high-anger participants imagined repetitions of personalized anger and neutral driving scripts while HR, DBP, and SBP were measured continuously. Participants in a habituation condition rated their imagery at posttest as significantly more pleasant, less arousing, more controllable, less vivid, less fearful, and less angry compared to participants in a control condition. Participants in both conditions also showed decreased blood pressure reactivity and recovery times from pretest to posttest. However, there were no effects for condition for any cardiovascular variable. Limitations of the experimental design are discussed, as well as implications of desynchronous change in anger response systems