Affiliation moderates the effects of social threat on stress-related cardiovascular responses: boundary conditions for a laboratory model of social support.

The authors tested the hypothesis that the response-attenuating effects of affiliation under stress are limited to conditions that involve high social threat. Ninety-six young adult women were exposed to standardized psychological challenges in one of four conditions that involved two levels of social affiliation (alone or accompanied by a close friend) and two levels of social threat (variations in the social behavior and perceived status of the experimenter). Social affiliation was associated with attenuated blood pressure responses to the challenges but only under conditions of high social threat. Affiliation was not associated with differences in self-reported emotional response to the challenges nor with alterations in cognitive task appraisal. Exploratory analyses suggested that some of these effects were stronger in hostile or socially avoidant individuals. Implications of these findings for interpreting the literature on social support and cardiovascular reactivity, and for understanding the potential role of social support in reducing stress-related disease pathogenesis, are discussed.