EFFECT OF A PET DOG ON HYPERTENSIVE PROCESS AND SELF-DISCLOSURE DURING MARITAL DIALOGUE.
Contributors: University of San Francisco.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 206
Subjects: Psychology, Physiological.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Social.
Description: This study addressed the question of pet mediated cardiovascular activity during interpersonal dialogue in an at risk population. Hypertension, viewed as a communication disease (Lynch, 1985), consists of both exaggerated cardiovascular arousal during intimate dialogue and deficits in self-disclosure skills. Although substantial evidence now exists that pets mediate cardiovascular response to some stressors, the mechanism for this effect remains unclear. The hypothesis that pets may alter the quality of marital communication and simultaneous hypertensive activity has not been investigated. This study tested six hypotheses in an attempt to identify significant relationships between human-pet interaction, self-disclosure and simultaneous hypertensive activity during marital dialogue.

Twenty couples who had one hypertensive spouse and owned a pet dog completed the Pet Relationship Scale and participated in one, videotaped interaction session. Two conditions, dog present (A) and dog absent (B) were counterbalanced in an ABAB protocol. Couples discussed pet related vignettes and interacted with their pet while the investigator was absent.

Four cardiovascular measures; heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and peripheral skin temperature were obtained once per minute for the hypertensive spouse. Self-disclosure and interaction with the pet were coded for both spouses once per minute from videotape replays using the Modified Self-Disclosure (Chelune, 1976) and Human-Pet Interaction (Messent, 1983), Coding Systems.

Multivariate analysis of variance for repeated measures yielded no significant changes in blood pressure, heart rate or peripheral temperature by condition. A statistically significant time by condition interaction for heart rate occurred in the first four minutes of the dog present condition and systolic blood pressure decreased significantly over time in both conditions. In the dog present condition, there was a significant increase in hypertensives' total number of self references and a decrease in the Intimacy, Affective Congruence and Positive Nonverbal Affect scores for both spouses. Additional significant effects are reported for self-disclosure analysis. Clinically significant cardiovascular changes were observed in the raw data. Recommendations are made for further investigation.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-08, Section: B, page: 4629.

Thesis (ED.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, 1995.

School code: 6019.