Between- and within-sex variation in hormonal responses to psychological stress in a large sample of college students

MAESTRIPIERI, D., BARAN, N. M., SAPIENZA, P., & ZINGALES, L. (2010). Between- and within-sex variation in hormonal responses to psychological stress in a large sample of college students. Stress: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress, 13(5), 413-424. doi:10.3109/10253891003681137. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

In class discussions on stress and through the film, we learned that stress can play a significant negative impact on our psychological well-being as well as on our physical health. For this reason, stress research is extremely abundant across disciplines. In psychology, researchers investigate ways to manage stress, what causes stress, and the effects of stress. An interesting article that I found in the literature deals with differences in stress according to gender. As opposed to looking into the brain, this article takes a different physiological approach – it examines hormone levels as a comparison of stress responses. The purpose of the study was to understand and observe patterns of stress responses to psychosocial stimuli by measuring hormones. Also, they wanted to tease out sources of variation in participants’ stress responses. The researchers obtained a large sample of college students to measure responses to psychosocial stressors in the form of hormone concentrations. Specifically, they measured salivary cortisol and testosterone levels after a computerized test that was intended to induce stress on the participant. (The test was one of complex economic scenarios and was given to MBA students). They found differences not only between genders, but within sex groups. Males had higher hormonal levels than women in that men had higher levels of salivary testosterone and cortisol both before and after the testing. However, testosterone decreased after the test for males, but not for females. It might seem that women had a stronger stress response to the testing because researchers discovered that the cortisol levels increased more-so in women than in men. Although, both sexes experienced an increase in cortisol levels. Across genders, a low concentration of hormones before the test predicted a larger increase, while a high concentration of hormones before the test coincided with larger decreases. As consistent with what we learned in class lecture, researchers site the example that testosterone can affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Examining the reasons for within-sex differences, they correlated sever psychosocial factors to hormone levels. For instance, higher testosterone levels tended to be found in males who did not have a romantic partner. Also, the absence of a romantic partner coincided with a greater cortisol response as opposed to participants who were married.

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