PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIVITY TO STRESS: A STUDY OF FORTY-SIX COLLEGE MALES

In this study of the relationship between personality and autonomic reactivity to stress, a small group, 6 of 46 college students, were outstanding psychologically. They received the highest ratings for Intimacy and Involvement which referred to an overall judgment regarding the degree and quality of healthy intimacy in personal relationships and the extent and nature of involvement and commitment to ideas and activities. They showed the most marked psychophysiological reactivity to laboratory stress, including the fact that while in the threatening situation being free to fantasy led to a rise in their autonomic indicators of anxiety. Other students utilized the fantasy defensively to bind anxiety, and their physiological indicators fell. The small, most reactive group also tended to show superior visual-motor performance.

The data were interpreted to mean that the greater physiological reactivity was a function of the more intense involvement in the novel and realistically nonthreatening laboratory situation. The small group of 6 who remained psychologically more open showed better adaptation to the stress situation as well as more marked physiological reactivity. The lesser physiological reactivity in the other students was thought to represent defensive, emotional withdrawal which resulted in less successful adaptation to the laboratory stress.