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Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study

Daily life stress is an omnipresent phenomenon in modern society. Research has linked prolonged activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to psychiatric and somatic diseases. Everyday stressors substantially contribute to these health risks. Despite the notion that the physiological stre...

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Autores principales: Linz, R., Singer, T., Engert, V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6193976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30337580
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33708-0
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author Linz, R.
Singer, T.
Engert, V.
author_facet Linz, R.
Singer, T.
Engert, V.
author_sort Linz, R.
collection PubMed
description Daily life stress is an omnipresent phenomenon in modern society. Research has linked prolonged activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to psychiatric and somatic diseases. Everyday stressors substantially contribute to these health risks. Despite the notion that the physiological stress response is highly dependent on concurrent psychological processes, investigations associating diurnal cortisol levels with subjective experience have primarily focused on affective states. The impact of everyday cognitive processes including thought content has been largely neglected. To investigate this link, moment-to-moment associations of psychological experience including subjective stress, thought content and affect, and cortisol levels were assessed throughout the daily routines of 289 healthy adult participants. We found that subjective stress interacted with current thought content and affect in predicting cortisol release: more negative and future-directed thoughts were associated with higher cortisol levels after experiencing subjective stress, suggesting an increase in negative future anticipation. Concurrent cortisol rises might reflect proactive coping to adequately prepare for upcoming demands. In the absence of subjective stress, more past-directed thoughts and negative affect were associated with higher cortisol levels. These findings provide evidence for a fundamental link between thought content and daily cortisol activation, and highlight the significant contribution of thought patterns to physiological stress levels.
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spelling pubmed-61939762018-10-24 Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study Linz, R. Singer, T. Engert, V. Sci Rep Article Daily life stress is an omnipresent phenomenon in modern society. Research has linked prolonged activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to psychiatric and somatic diseases. Everyday stressors substantially contribute to these health risks. Despite the notion that the physiological stress response is highly dependent on concurrent psychological processes, investigations associating diurnal cortisol levels with subjective experience have primarily focused on affective states. The impact of everyday cognitive processes including thought content has been largely neglected. To investigate this link, moment-to-moment associations of psychological experience including subjective stress, thought content and affect, and cortisol levels were assessed throughout the daily routines of 289 healthy adult participants. We found that subjective stress interacted with current thought content and affect in predicting cortisol release: more negative and future-directed thoughts were associated with higher cortisol levels after experiencing subjective stress, suggesting an increase in negative future anticipation. Concurrent cortisol rises might reflect proactive coping to adequately prepare for upcoming demands. In the absence of subjective stress, more past-directed thoughts and negative affect were associated with higher cortisol levels. These findings provide evidence for a fundamental link between thought content and daily cortisol activation, and highlight the significant contribution of thought patterns to physiological stress levels. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6193976/ /pubmed/30337580 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33708-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Linz, R.
Singer, T.
Engert, V.
Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title_full Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title_fullStr Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title_full_unstemmed Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title_short Interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
title_sort interactions of momentary thought content and subjective stress predict cortisol fluctuations in a daily life experience sampling study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6193976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30337580
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-33708-0
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