The stability of and intercorrelations among cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, and psychological reactivity.
One hundred fifteen college students were exposed to an evaluative speech task twice, separated by 2 weeks. At both sessions, we assessed cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and psychological response at baseline and during the task. We found stability across sessions for stress-induced increases in anxiety and task engagement, heart rate, blood pressure, norepinephrine (but not epinephrine), cortisol, natural killer cell cytotoxicity, and numbers of circulating CD3+, CD8+, and CD56+ (but not CD4+ or CD19+) lymphocytes. The stable cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine reactivities were intercorrelated, providing evidence of a unified physiological stress response across these outcomes. Although stable stress-induced increases in task engagement were associated with the physiological stress responses, stress-induced anxiety was not.
Cohen
S
S
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Hamrick
N
N
Rodriguez
M S
MS
Feldman
P J
PJ
Rabin
B S
BS
Manuck
S B
SB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D002395:Catecholamines / Q000097:blood; D003602:Cytotoxicity, Immunologic / Q000502:physiology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000097:blood; D016131:Lymphocyte Subsets / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000523:psychology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000097:blood / Q000276:immunology / Q000503:physiopathology*
D002395:Catecholamines; D006854:Hydrocortisone