Effects of panel sex composition on the physiological stress responses to 
psychosocial stress in healthy young men and women

Duchesne, A.; Tessera, E.; Dedovic, K.; Engert, Veronika; Pruessner, J. C.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.09.009

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Effects of panel sex composition on the physiological stress responses to psychosocial stress in healthy young men and women

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons19628

Engert, Veronika
Department Social Neuroscience, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Duchesne, A., Tessera, E., Dedovic, K., Engert, V., & Pruessner, J. C. (2012). Effects of panel sex composition on the physiological stress responses to psychosocial stress in healthy young men and women. Biological Psychology, 89(1), 99-106. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.09.009.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-FB88-9

Abstract

Men and women differ in regard to psychosocial stress responses. Biological and contextual factors are known to mediate these differences; however, few studies investigated their interaction. In the present study, we examined contributions of both contextual and biological factors to the stress response of young healthy adults. Men and women were exposed to a modified version of Trier Social Stress Test. The participants gave a speech in front of a panel of judges, composed of either male or female panelists. Both men, and women presented a cortisol increase only when exposed to opposite sex panelists. Interestingly, this effect was only observed in women in their follicular phase. This finding showed that the induction of a psychosocial stress response does not strictly rely on direct social evaluation, but also depends on the sex composition of the panel. Implications for future studies are discussed.