PERSISTENT HIGH CORTISOL RESPONSES TO REPEATED PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS IN A SUBPOPULATION OF HEALTHY-MEN

The present study tested the hypothesis that some subjects may not rea dily show habituation of adrenocortical stress responses to repeated p sychological stress. Twenty healthy male subjects were each exposed fi ve times to the same, brief psychosocial stressor (public speaking and mental arithmetic in front of an audience) with one stress session pe r day. Salivary cortisol levels were assessed as an index of adrenocor tical stress responses. For the total group, cortisol levels were sign ificantly elevated on each of the 5 days. The mean response decreased hem day 1 to day 2; however, no further attenuation could be observed on the remaining days. Cluster analysis revealed two groups of subject s who showed completely different response kinetics. In the first grou p (N = 13), termed ''low responders,'' cortisol levels were elevated o n day 1 only. Day 2 to 5 cortisol levels were unaltered. In contrast, subjects in the second group (''high responders'') displayed large inc reases to each of the five experimental treatments. This group had no significant response decrement from day 1 to day 2 to 4 and only a mar ginal response difference between day 1 and day 5. Discriminant analys is revealed that a combination of five personality scales plus the sco res on a symptoms checklist significantly discriminated between high a nd low responders. With this discriminant function, all 20 subjects we re correctly classified to the two groups. These results are discussed with a focus on the possible impact of adrenocortical response types on health and disease.