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Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania

Previous research shows a nonlinear dependency between hair cortisol concentrations and perceived stress levels. This may be due to stress being targeted at the individual level despite it also being a social phenomenon which is often affected by group dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this stud...

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Autores principales: Smaliukienė, Rasa, Bekesiene, Svajone, Mažeikienė, Asta, Larsson, Gerry, Karčiauskaitė, Dovilė, Mazgelytė, Eglė, Vaičaitienė, Ramutė
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8835136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35162686
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031663
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author Smaliukienė, Rasa
Bekesiene, Svajone
Mažeikienė, Asta
Larsson, Gerry
Karčiauskaitė, Dovilė
Mazgelytė, Eglė
Vaičaitienė, Ramutė
author_facet Smaliukienė, Rasa
Bekesiene, Svajone
Mažeikienė, Asta
Larsson, Gerry
Karčiauskaitė, Dovilė
Mazgelytė, Eglė
Vaičaitienė, Ramutė
author_sort Smaliukienė, Rasa
collection PubMed
description Previous research shows a nonlinear dependency between hair cortisol concentrations and perceived stress levels. This may be due to stress being targeted at the individual level despite it also being a social phenomenon which is often affected by group dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the influence of perceived stress on the hair cortisol level, considering the impact of the variables of group dynamics (interpersonal, task, and norm cohesion). Information was collected on 11 groups of, in total, 112 young men in three phases of time during their compulsory military training (covering nine months in total). The classification and regression tree (C&RT) method was used to predict hair cortisol concentrations in groups. The results show that the variability of the hair cortisol level in young men groups can be explained by perceived stress only when the groups were in formation process (47.7% normalised importance in Model 1) and when the groups were working on their final tasks (37.80% normalised importance in Model 3); meanwhile, the importance of perceived stress in explaining hair cortisol concentrations is low when the group is in a routine period of a group life-span (28.9% normalised importance in Model 2). Interpersonal cohesion (normalised importance 100% in Model 1 and 80.0% in Model 3) and task cohesion (normalised importance 78.6% in Model 2) were the most important predictors in the study area. These results point to the importance of the elements of group dynamics when it comes to explaining the nature of hair cortisol as accumulated stress biomarkers in young men.
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spelling pubmed-88351362022-02-12 Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania Smaliukienė, Rasa Bekesiene, Svajone Mažeikienė, Asta Larsson, Gerry Karčiauskaitė, Dovilė Mazgelytė, Eglė Vaičaitienė, Ramutė Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Previous research shows a nonlinear dependency between hair cortisol concentrations and perceived stress levels. This may be due to stress being targeted at the individual level despite it also being a social phenomenon which is often affected by group dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the influence of perceived stress on the hair cortisol level, considering the impact of the variables of group dynamics (interpersonal, task, and norm cohesion). Information was collected on 11 groups of, in total, 112 young men in three phases of time during their compulsory military training (covering nine months in total). The classification and regression tree (C&RT) method was used to predict hair cortisol concentrations in groups. The results show that the variability of the hair cortisol level in young men groups can be explained by perceived stress only when the groups were in formation process (47.7% normalised importance in Model 1) and when the groups were working on their final tasks (37.80% normalised importance in Model 3); meanwhile, the importance of perceived stress in explaining hair cortisol concentrations is low when the group is in a routine period of a group life-span (28.9% normalised importance in Model 2). Interpersonal cohesion (normalised importance 100% in Model 1 and 80.0% in Model 3) and task cohesion (normalised importance 78.6% in Model 2) were the most important predictors in the study area. These results point to the importance of the elements of group dynamics when it comes to explaining the nature of hair cortisol as accumulated stress biomarkers in young men. MDPI 2022-01-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8835136/ /pubmed/35162686 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031663 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Smaliukienė, Rasa
Bekesiene, Svajone
Mažeikienė, Asta
Larsson, Gerry
Karčiauskaitė, Dovilė
Mazgelytė, Eglė
Vaičaitienė, Ramutė
Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title_full Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title_fullStr Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title_full_unstemmed Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title_short Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania
title_sort hair cortisol, perceived stress, and the effect of group dynamics: a longitudinal study of young men during compulsory military training in lithuania
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8835136/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35162686
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031663
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