Social cognition under stress: Differential effects of stress-induced cortisol elevations in healthy young men and women
Introduction
The ability to form enduring social relationships permeates human society and in large part is dependent on individuals' social cognition. Social cognition refers to the mental operations that underlie social interactions and includes the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., emotions, thoughts, intentions) to oneself and others. A key brain structure implicated in successful social cognition is the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (for review, see Gallagher and Frith, 2003, Olsson and Ochsner, 2008, Singer, 2006). Aside from being implicated in social cognition, the PFC is also concerned with the feedback regulation of the stress responsive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (e.g., de Kloet et al., 1998). Of course, there is abundant evidence that the secretion of glucocorticoid (GC) stress hormones (e.g., cortisol; CORT) may modulate memory functioning (e.g., de Kloet et al., 1999, McGaugh and Roozendaal, 2002, Wolf, 2008). However, despite vigorous research of the past decades, only very few studies have focused on social aspects of information processing.
Meanwhile, there is considerable evidence suggesting that the effects of stress-induced CORT elevations on memory performance may be moderated by sex differences (e.g., Andreano and Cahill, 2006, Wolf et al., 2001). For example, Wolf et al. (2001) found that within a group of young adults exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum et al., 1993), CORT increases displayed a strong and negative correlation with memory retrieval performance in men, while no such correlation was found among women. Similarly, Andreano and Cahill (2006) demonstrated that low, but not high, CORT responses to stress enhanced memory consolidation and that this effect was restricted to male participants. In line with the results of Andreano and Cahill (2006), a number of studies (e.g., Buchanan and Tranel, 2008, Nater et al., 2007) have shown that memory modulation following stress exposure may depend on the magnitude of the CORT response.
In relation to this, it has been proposed that the biobehavioral response to stress differs between men and women (Taylor et al., 2000). Traditionally, the primary human stress response has been characterized as a “fight-or-flight” response. According to Taylor and colleagues, men and women share this fight-or-flight response on the physiological level, yet they differ in their behavioral stress response. Specifically, Taylor et al. (2000) suggest that, depending on the nature of the stressor, men either fight or flee. Women, on the other hand, engage in a so-called “tend-and-befriend” behavioral stress response. Here, tending refers to nurturing activities that are adaptive when the offspring is nearby, while befriending refers to the construction and maintenance of social relationships to alleviate stress. This latter issue points to the distinct possibility that in times of stress, women might show enhanced social cognition.
With this in mind, the current study was set out to determine whether stress-induced CORT elevations would yield sex-specific effects on one of the most important types of human social cognition, namely the ability to attribute internal states to oneself or others based on external cues (e.g., facial expressions, speech).
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty-two male and 32 female undergraduates with a mean age of 25.89 years (SD = 4.33) participated in the current study. Suffering from cardiovascular diseases, severe physical illnesses (e.g., fibromyalgia), hypertension, endocrine disorders, substance abuse, heavy smoking (> 10 cigarettes/day) or being on any kind of medication served as exclusion criteria. Women using oral contraceptives were also excluded from participation. Test protocols were approved by the national ethic committee of the
Background characteristics
With regard to age and AQ scores, there were neither main effects of Group or Sex, nor a Group × Sex interaction (all ps > 0.10). Men had higher BMI scores than women (p < 0.01).
Negative affect following TSST/control task
ANOVA revealed significant Group × Time [F(1,60) = 15.26; p < 0.001] and Sex × Time [F(1,60) = 5.75; p = 0.020] interactions. Therefore, ANOVAs were run for men and women separately. For men, the ANOVA showed a main effect of Time [F(1,30) = 4.32; p = 0.046] and a Group × Time interaction [F(1,30) = 9.23; p = 0.005], but no main effect of Group.
Discussion
The current study investigated whether stress-induced CORT elevations would yield sex-specific effects on social cognition. Results from this study can be summarized as follows. First, no differences in RMET scores were found between low CORT responders, high CORT responders, and non-stressed controls. However, on the more ecologically valid and complex and, thus, more sensitive video-based MASC measure (e.g., Dziobek et al., 2006a, Dziobek et al., 2006b), we obtained evidence for sex specific
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to Dr. Tom Smeets (446-07-014) and a German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant DFG WO 733/7-1 to Prof. Dr. Oliver T. Wolf.
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