The relation of social support and blood pressure: Psychological and demographic moderators

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2018-01-01

Department

Psychology

Program

Psychology

Citation of Original Publication

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Subjects

Abstract

Social support is related to cardiovascular disease (CVD), but little is known about specific pathways of this association. CVD risk factors, such as resting blood pressure and hypertension, could be explanatory factors. The current study examined whether agreeableness and sex moderate the relation of emotional social support to these risk factors. Multiple and logistic regression analyses were used to examine interactive associations of emotional social support, agreeableness, and sex to resting blood pressure and hypertension in a subsample of individuals of the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Lifespan study. Hypothesized interactions were not significant; neither social support nor agreeableness were independently associated with outcome variables. This suggests that interactive relations of these predictors do not account for differences in these outcomes. Although there may be no relation, it is possible that the selected measures were unable to capture existing relations; future research is suggested to this effect.