Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the effects of cardiac afferents not only in their ability to maintain homeostasis, but also to alter cognitive processes. However, very little information is available concerning the effects of stress induction on the modulation of these behaviors. The author proposed that cardiac afferent activity during systole will impair cognitive function in correctly categorizing fear and anger faces and that deliberate stress induction will increase heart rate, blood pressure and baroreceptor activity, thereby increasing the afferent effect across participants. Also, it was theorized that high heart rate variability, suggestive of high trait self-control would have a negative correlation with cardiac phase effects. While it was found that cardiac phase effects, specifically systole, did have an inhibitory effect on the accurate detection of emotional faces, there was no finding that stress induction further attenuated this effect, nor did it correlate with high heart rate variability.