Behavioral correlates of sympathoadrenal reactivity: the toughness model.

Research with humans is reviewed showing that increased levels of urinary epinephrine (EPI) and norepinephrine (NE) from samples taken following mental challenge/stress situations are associated with better performance in those situations and with emotional stability. Another research tradition with humans and animals shows that various training protocols lead to increased peripheral and central catecholamine capacities. Those training protocols include continuous exposure to cold, periodic exposure to some intermittent stressors such as foot or tail shock (with intervening rest periods), or programs of aerobic exercise. While increasing catecholamine capacities, those procedures also result in lower base rates of the catecholamines and with the delay of pituitary-adrenal-cortical responses in challenge/stress contexts. That physiological pattern of "toughness" leads to improved performance in challenge/stress situations, increased tolerance of stressors (i.e., reduced behavioral suppression or depression), emotional stability, and immune system enhancement. The special conditions are discussed that are required for demonstrating increased catecholamine capacities rather than the attenuation of arousal associated with increased muscular and neuroendocrine efficiency. Finally, the role played by toughness in reducing anxiety while increasing energy in challenge/stress situations is discussed.

Arousal and physiological toughness: implications for mental and physical health.

From W.B. Cannon's identification of adrenaline with "fight or flight" to modern views of stress, negative views of peripheral physiological arousal predominate. Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal is associated with anxiety, neuroticism, the Type A personality, cardiovascular disease, and immune system suppression; illness susceptibility is associated with life events requiring adjustments. "Stress control" has become almost synonymous with arousal reduction. A contrary positive view of peripheral arousal follows from studies of subjects exposed to intermittent stressors. Such exposure leads to low SNS arousal base rates, but to strong and responsive challenge- or stress-induced SNS-adrenal-medullary arousal, with resistance to brain catecholamine depletion and with suppression of pituitary adrenal-cortical responses. That pattern of arousal defines physiological toughness and, in interaction with psychological coping, corresponds with positive performance in even complex tasks, with emotional stability, and with immune system enhancement. The toughness concept suggests an opposition between effective short- and long-term coping, with implications for effective therapies and stress-inoculating life-styles.

Female sexual arousal and the menstrual cycle.

Self-reports of sexual arousal were significantly affected by conditions under which they were elicited. Such self-reports in women not taking oral contraceptives were congruent with a hormonal basis for such arousal only when the women were "unaware" that the study investigated sexual arousal as a function of the menstrual cycle. The "unaware" condition was operationalized by means of daily self-reports elicited from males and females for 11 weeks under the guise of a study of biological rhythms. A composite of one to three menstrual cycles for 26 women not taking oral contraceptives showed that sexual arousal during the luteal phase, when progesterone is relatively high, was significantly lower compared to peaks around ovulation, and premenstrual and late menstrual days (p less than .02). For the "aware" condition, women were asked to remember moods for the premenstrual, menstruating and luteal phases of the very last cycle on which they had just finished giving "unaware" daily self-reports. A 2 x 3 analysis of variance (with "aware" versus "unaware" conditions and premenstrual, menstruating, and luteal phases of the last cycle as the two independent variables) yielded a significant interaction effect with F = 6.5, df = 2, 50, p less than .003. In the "unaware" condition, sexual arousal was reported lowest during the luteal phase. The opposite pattern was reported in the "aware" condition. The results suggest that cyclical variability may not be simply due to women's misattributions. However, "awareness" has an effect on self-report measures and may bias reports according to cultural stereotypes. Daily self-reports of sexual arousal for men were averaged over the duration of the study. This average was 3.16. The equivalent average for women not taking oral contraceptives was 2.35 and for women taking oral contraceptives was 2.62. Analysis of variance of these three means yielded a significant difference with F = 4.49, df = 2, 59, p less than .02.

Stability of perceived tension as a function of the menstrual cycle.

The stability of tension judgments among males and females who were either taking or not taking combination low-progestin oral contraceptive pills was investigated. Judgments of interpersonal pressure in videotaped vignettes provided tension measures. The vignettes were presented in two sessions separated by two weeks. Correlations between pressure judgments of .94 for males, .79 for pill females and .40 for non-pill females (all sig less than .002) supported the prediction that non-pill females experience the largest fluctuations in tension across the menstrual cycle. A significant number of non-pill females who changed their scores and who changed from midcycle to premenstrual-menstrual phases or vice versa between the two experimental sessions shifted their tension scores in the predicted direction (p less than .04). As predicted, non-pill females scoring in the lower half on premenstrual-menstrual symptomatology were more consistent in pressure judgments than those high on symptomatology, with correlations of .51 (sig less than .004) and .24 (NS) respectively. Analysis of pressure judgments as a function of menstrual phase and high-low symptomatology indicated a main effect for symptomatology (sig less than .01) with the high group perceiving more pressure. Lack of a main effect for menstrual phase was attributed to large individual variations in tension scores. Results were interpreted as indicating physiological causality underlying the variability in tension across the menstrual cycle. Substituting the Repression-Sensitization dimension for symptomatology yielded no significant results which could lead to a psychological interpretation of such variability.