VULNERABILITY TO STRESS - SELF-CRITICISM AND STRESS-INDUCED CHANGES IN BIOCHEMISTRY

It has been hypothesized that individuals who are high on the attribut e of self-criticism are particularly vulnerable to failure stress. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between self-critic ism and changes in plasma homovanillic acid (HVA; the metabolite of do pamine) and emotion during exposure to an induced-failure task. Partic ipants consisted of 21 women. Plasma HVA and emotion were assessed at three time points: baseline (T1), during stress exposure (T2), and 40 minutes after cessation of the stressor (T3). We found that self-criti cism was significantly and positively related to changes in plasma HVA during stress exposure. In addition, the personality attribute was si gnificantly and positively related to subjective ratings of stress and changes in scores on the Confusion-Bewilderment scale of the Profile of Mood States during the task. To our knowledge, this is the first st udy to report that self-criticism is related to stress-induced changes in biochemistry.