Relationship between Individual Personality Variables and Body Temperature Response Patterns in the Cold

Abstract

While there is some evidence to indicate that strong and complex relationships exist between the psychological and physiological responses of human beings to stress-provoking stimuli (1, 6, 11, 12, 15, 18), much of this evidence is anecdotal or has been obtained using very small numbers of Ss. The present study was designed to provide additional information about, and substantiation of, the apparent relationships between certain psychological and physiological factors under stress, based on a large enough sample of Ss to permit adequate statistical treatment of the data. The study departs from conventional stress techniques in that it employs exposure to extreme temperature, in this case, cold, as the stress-provoking stimulus. From a qualitative analysis of some unpublished data concerning rectal temperature measurements in the cold: it is apparent that the differences between individual rates of recovery of normal rectal temperatures after removal from cold stress conditions are greater than the differences between individual rectal temperatures prior to and daring exposure to cold and that some of this variation can be accounted for by psychological factors, particularly the variability of the personality attributes of Ss. Most research involving rectal temperatures has focussed on pre-exposure and exposure periods (2, 5, 14, 17). The emphasis on the post-exposure measures of body temperature is based on the assumption that individuals, during exposure to a very stressful stimulus, differ less in their physiological responses to it than in their abilities to recover from it. In severe stress, the stimulus is apparently of sufficient magnitude to over-ride any individual differences in physiological response. Thus, for example, men placed nude in an ambient temperature of 30°F would show about the same patterns of skin cooling and internal body temperature change. Removal from exposure to the stressful stimulus should then allow individual differences in physiological structure and function to manifest themselves in different rates of recovery of thermal equilibrium. Therefore, recovery from exposure to stress appears to provide, at least on a logical basis, a better opportunity for study of the relationship of psychological variables with physiological