Hormones: empirical contribution. Cortisol reactivity and recovery in the context of adolescent personality disorder.

The present study examined whether the associations between stress responses and psychopathology were moderated by adolescent personality disorder (PD) traits. Participants were a community sample of 106 adolescents (47 male, Mage = 16.01) and their parents. Parents reported on adolescents' PD traits and behavioral problems. Changes in salivary cortisol were assessed in response to a laboratory-based stress induction. Moderated regression analyses revealed significant linear and quadratic interactions between cortisol recovery and PD traits in the prediction of behavioral problems. Although typically conceptualized as "adaptive," steeper poststressor recovery was associated with more behavioral problems when PD traits were high. These findings suggest that, in the presence of maladaptive personality traits, premature recovery from environmental stressors may indicate an inability to respond appropriately to negative environmental stimuli, thus reflecting a core disturbance in PD trait functioning. The results underscore the informative role that personality plays in illuminating the nature of hormone functioning in adolescents and are interpreted in a developmental psychopathology framework.