Stress, rejection, and hormones: Cortisol and progesterone reactivity to laboratory speech and rejection tasks in women and men.

ABSTRACT: Stress and social rejection have important impacts on health. Among the mechanisms implicated are hormonal systems such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which produces cortisol in humans. Current research employs speech stressors and social rejection stressors to understand hormonal responses in a laboratory setting. However, it is not clear whether social rejection stressors elicit hormonal reactivity. In addition to cortisol, progesterone has been highlighted as a potential stress- and affiliation-related hormone in humans. In the present study, 131 participants (70 men and 61 women) were randomly assigned to be exposed to one of four conditions: standardized speech stressor; speech control; social rejection task; or a control (inclusion) version of the social rejection

SUBMITTER: Gaffey AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4288428 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature