Florida State University, Department of Psychology, 1107 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4301, USA.
Horm Behav. 2010 Jul;58(2):250-6. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2010.03.009. Epub 2010 Mar 17.
Previous research indicates that psychopathic personality traits are associated with lower cortisol secretion in response to stress in men but not in women. The current study explored whether prior null results for women were related to the latency of the cortisol stress response to two different types of stressors. Additionally, accuracy of self-reported menstrual phase was explored via salivary progesterone levels. A mixed-sex sample of 145 participants characterized by high (36 men, 37 women) and low (34 men, 38 women) scores on a screening measure of psychopathic personality traits were randomly assigned to either a performance-based stressor task or a social rejection stressor task. Salivary hormone samples were taken just prior to task onset (baseline) and at 0, 20, 40, and 60 min post-stressor. Results indicated that both men and women characterized by psychopathic personality traits exhibited lower stress-induced cortisol levels to the performance-based task in comparison with controls at 20 min post-stressor. The social rejection task produced a cortisol response 20 min post-stressor in the male controls only. Removal of women with low progesterone from the analyses strengthened the psychopathy group differences. Results could suggest that deficient cortisol production in response to stress might be another important neurobiological feature associated with psychopathic traits, and that biological verification of menstrual phase is an important aspect to obtaining accurate cortisol results in women.
先前的研究表明，男性的精神病态人格特质与应激时皮质醇分泌减少有关，但女性并非如此。本研究探讨了女性先前的阴性结果是否与两种不同类型应激源的皮质醇应激反应潜伏期有关。此外，通过唾液孕激素水平来探讨自我报告的月经周期的准确性。一个由 145 名参与者组成的混合性别样本，其特征是高（36 名男性，37 名女性）和低（34 名男性，38 名女性）的精神病态人格特质筛查测量得分，被随机分配到基于表现的应激任务或社会拒绝应激任务中。唾液激素样本在任务开始前（基线）以及应激后 0、20、40 和 60 分钟时采集。结果表明，与对照组相比，具有精神病态人格特质的男性和女性在应激后 20 分钟时，基于表现的任务引起的皮质醇水平较低。只有男性对照组在社会拒绝任务后 20 分钟时产生了皮质醇反应。从分析中去除孕激素水平低的女性，增强了精神病态组之间的差异。结果可能表明，应激时皮质醇生成不足可能是与精神病态特征相关的另一个重要神经生物学特征，并且对月经周期进行生物学验证是获得女性准确皮质醇结果的一个重要方面。
