The stability of and intercorrelations among cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, and psychological reactivity

One hundred fifteen college students were exposed to an evaluative speech t ask twice, separated by 2 weeks. At both sessions, we assessed cardiovascul ar endocrine, immune, and psychological response at baseline and during the task. We found stability across sessions for stress-induced increases in a nxiety and task engagement, heart rate, blood pressure, norepinephrine (but nor epinephrine), cortisol, natural killer cell cytotoxicity, and numbers of circulating CD3+, CD8+, and CD56+ (but not CD4+ or CD19+) lymphocytes. T he stable cardiovascular immune, and endocrine reactivities were intercorre lated, providing evidence of a unified physiological stress response across these outcomes. Although stable stress-induced increases in task engagemen t were associated with the physiological stress responses, stress-induced a nxiety was not.