Abstract
While evidence suggests that women exhibit psychophysiological differences in stress reactivity across the menstrual cycle, the relationships among psychological and physiological stress reactivity states are not well understood. Healthy, normally cycling women (N = 44) participated in two counterbalanced laboratory sessions during the follicular and luteal phases where heart rate and subjective stress were assessed in response to stressors. There were no differences in the magnitudes of psychophysiological stress responses across the cycle. Psychological and physiological states were largely unrelated in the follicular phase but interrelationships were found in the luteal phase and these relationships were influenced by autonomic perception and trait anxiety. For women with high trait anxiety, autonomic perception appeared to buffer psychological and physiological stress reactivity during the luteal phase, suggesting that autonomic perception may be a protective factor for more anxious women during times of acute stress.
Highlights
While the stress response is adaptive [1], maladaptive reactivity has been linked to many health problems in women
Evidence typically suggests that women experience higher levels of stress in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle such as discussed by Gordon and Girdler [3], yet little is known about the relationships among physiological and psychological measures of reactivity
The present study investigated the relation between autonomic perception, or the subjective awareness of physiological arousals, and psychophysiological relationships across the menstrual cycle
Summary
While the stress response is adaptive [1], maladaptive reactivity has been linked to many health problems in women (e.g., coronary artery disease [2]). Evidence typically suggests that women experience higher levels of stress in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle such as discussed by Gordon and Girdler [3], yet little is known about the relationships among physiological and psychological measures of reactivity. There was no effect on subjective stress perhaps because body awareness encompasses a wide variety of sensations (e.g., body position). Given these emerging findings, the present study investigated the relation between autonomic perception, or the subjective awareness of physiological arousals (e.g., heart rate), and psychophysiological relationships across the menstrual cycle. We hypothesized that (1) women would exhibit greater psychophysiological responses to stressors during the luteal phase, (2) psychophysiological responses to stressors would be positively related, and (3) autonomic perception would moderate the relation between psychophysiological responses to stressors
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