Stress exposure increases risk for depressive symptoms. However, there are substantial individual differences in affective responses to stress. High-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), a marker of vagally-mediated parasympathetic activity, has been conceptualized as a psychophysiological index of emotion regulation that may moderate individuals' responses to stress. Using a daily diary design, we tested whether individual differences in resting HF-HRV moderated the association between daily child-related stress and negative affect among a sample of 84 heterosexual couples with preschool-aged children. After controlling for participants' age, gender, socioeconomic status, employment status, and ethnicity, hierarchical linear modeling revealed that resting HF-HRV moderated both the between-person and within-person associations between self-reported child-related stress and daily negative affect. Between-person analyses indicated that the strength of the positive association between mean daily child stress and negative affect across the daily diary period increased with decreasing resting HF-HRV. Similarly, within-person analyses indicated that on days when participants reported more child-related stress than usual, the magnitude of the increase in negative affect on that day was inversely related to resting HF-HRV. Taken together, these findings suggest that lower resting HF-HRV may index vulnerability to stress-related disturbances in negative affect. This increased negative affective response to daily stress may be one pathway through which individuals with lower resting HF-HRV are at increased risk for depressive symptoms over time.

压力暴露会增加出现抑郁症状的风险。然而，对压力的情感反应存在显着的个体差异。高频心率变异性 (HF-HRV) 是迷走神经介导的副交感神经活动的标志，已被概念化为情绪调节的心理生理指标，可以缓和个人对压力的反应。使用每日日记设计，我们测试了 84 对有学龄前儿童的异性恋夫妇样本中静息 HF-HRV 的个体差异是否可以调节日常儿童相关压力与负面影响之间的关联。在控制了参与者的年龄、性别、社会经济地位、就业状况和种族后，分层线性模型显示，静息 HF-HRV 调节了自我报告的与儿童相关的压力与日常负面影响之间的人与人之间的关联。人与人之间的分析表明，随着静息 HF-HRV 的降低，平均每日儿童压力与每日日记期间的负面影响之间的正相关强度增加。同样，个人内部分析表明，在参与者报告的与儿童相关的压力比平时更多的日子里，当天负面影响的增加幅度与静息 HF-HRV 呈负相关。综上所述，这些发现表明，较低的静息 HF-HRV 可能表明对负面情绪中与压力相关的干扰的脆弱性。