Key result
Social evaluative threat during a speech task enhanced affective, cortisol, and cardiac autonomic responses compared to performing the task alone.
Why the study?
Does social evaluative threat increase physiological and affective stress responses in healthy university students?
RCT (n=61)
Open-label
Randomly allocated
No
Does social evaluative threat increase physiological and affective stress responses in healthy university students?
Social evaluative threat determines the magnitude of broad physiological activation, with cortisol increases predicted by sympathetic activation rather than affective responses.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Social evaluation must be controlled in stress testing protocols; extends RCT evidence that sympathetic activation predicts cortisol reactivity over affective responses.
OBJECTIVE: To examine the Social Self Preservation Theory, which predicts that stressors involving social evaluative threat (SET) characteristically activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The idea that distinct psychosocial factors may underlie specific patterns of neuroendocrine stress responses has been a topic of recurrent debate. METHODS: Sixty-one healthy university students (n = 31 females) performed a challenging speech task in one of three conditions that aimed to impose increasing levels of SET: performing the task alone (no social evaluation), with one evaluating observer, or with four evaluating observers. Indices of sympathetic (preejection period) and parasympathetic (heart rate variability) cardiac drive were obtained by impedance- and electrocardiography. Salivary cortisol was used to index HPA activity. Questionnaires assessed affective responses. RESULTS: Affective responses (shame/embarrassment, anxiety, negative affect, and self-esteem), cortisol, heart rate, sympathetic and parasympathetic activation all differentiated evaluative from nonevaluative task conditions (p < .001). The largest effect sizes were observed for cardiac autonomic responses. Physiological reactivity increased in parallel with increasing audience size (p < .001). An increase in cortisol was predicted by sympathetic activation during the task (p < .001), but not by affective responses. CONCLUSION: It would seem that SET determines the magnitude, rather than the pattern, of physiological activation. This potential to perturb broadly multiple physiological systems may help explain why social stress has been associated with a range of health outcomes. We propose a threshold-activation model as a physiological explanation for why engaging stressors, such as those involving social evaluation or uncontrollability, may seem to induce selectively cortisol release.
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Bosch et al. (2009) conducted an RCT in Healthy (n=61). Social evaluative threat (speech task with 1 or 4 observers) vs. Performing the task alone (no audience) was evaluated on Differentiation of evaluative from nonevaluative task conditions by affective and physiological responses (p=<0.001). Social evaluative threat during a speech task enhanced affective, cortisol, and cardiac autonomic responses compared to performing the task alone.
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