Cardiovascular gender effects as a function of task difficulty and the gender relevance of a behavioral challenge

The current study assessed the effects of gender relevance and instrumental task difficulty on sympathetically-mediated cardiovascular responses of men and women. Subjects were presented with a character-recognition task and told that men typically perform higher (masculine task instructions) or that women typically perform higher (feminine task instructions) on the task. Subjects were to achieve a low, high, or extreme standard on the task to be successful, and they were told that they could win an incentive if they did well. Cardiovascular (systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate) and subjective measures were taken prior to and during the task period. Because analysis of the subjective measures indicated that experimental operations were not successful in the low standard conditions, these cells were not included in the final analyses. Planned comparisons of systolic reactivity in the high- and extreme-standard conditions were consistent with predictions. When the standard was high and the task was depicted as feminine, cardiovascular responses were relatively greater for females than males; when the standard was high and the task was depicted as masculine, cardiovascular responses were relatively greater for males than females. Systolic reactivity was low for both gender groups when the standard was extreme. There were no group effects for diastolic pressure or heart rate data. Results conceptually replicate effects obtained in a previous study and extend that study by demonstrating cardiovascular effects within an appetitive context and including an extreme objective standard.