In my psych class we reviewed some studies about stress responses.

1) One showed how different responses were evident pretty much from birth. In the hospital, two day old babies are tested for PKU by having a little bit of blood taken from their heels.

The psychologists observed marked differences in how upset the babies got upon getting their heels pricked, and how long those who got upset stayed upset for. Some babies made barely a whimper while others balled for a very long time.

The psychologists studied the same group of children for several years, and found their responses to stress later in life to be proportionally the same relative to each other. They said that the responses are linked to cortisol levels, but although the tape we saw differentiated between initial strength of stress reactions and how long it took for the children to calm themselves down, they did not say how cortisol or other factors played into these two different aspects.

2) Another very interesting study mentioned was on four month old American and Japanese babies. They were all being given some mandatory shot, I think a vaccine. Although they had responses which varied from each other as described, all of the American babies cried. The Japanese babies did not respond as dramatically, and 30-40% didn't cry at all.

As the experimenter said, it is unclear how much if any of this difference is due to the personality differences found in the 2 day old babies. Cultural differences alone could easily explain the difference. Americans tend to keep their infants in separate rooms and things of that nature, whereas Japanese mothers tend to sleep with their babies and always be close by. Hence, an American baby may be used to needing to be very loud to be heard, whereas a Japanese baby may always be sure that mom is close by and therefore not feel the need to make a fuss to have its concerns be known.

3) Another very interesting study was done on monkeys. According to the therapists interviewed, the Rhesus monkeys have as wide a range in stress reaction as humans, and they have the benefit for studying of only taking 4 years to mature. Since stress reaction is highly genetically based, they were able to breed the monkeys for various traits. As with humans, they were generally consistent in reaction from birth through adulthood.

However, for one study they took monkeys predisposed to neuroticism and had them raised by foster mothers who were very nurturing. Those baby monkeys turned out well adjusted.

closing thoughts Most of what I've been getting out of these studies and other related things the prof has been going over is that neurotic/well adjusted temperment is highly genetically related and reinforced in early years. But if one is put in an unusually good (or probably bad as well) environment significant change can and does occur.

As the teacher has talked about, its all about predisposition. You're genetically predisposed to go one way or the other, to varying degrees, but that doesn't mean you have to.

personal thoughtsUnfortunately its pretty difficult to do these sorts of studies on adults. However, I think I personally have changed my cortisol levels over the past few years. My mother is pretty neurotic, and I think I used to be too. I still lean that way, but thankfully for myself and everyone who has to deal with me, much less so these days ;)

While I'm obviously genetically predisposed to neuroticism to a degree, I have no idea how much is nurture v.s. nature, or what the implications of that difference would be. I've definitely had "nature" type experiences at a very young age that seem very likely to cause neuroticism.

Over the past few years I've learned a lot for helping calm myself down and consequently to not get worked up as much in the first place ;) And Patri has of course been a huge help. He seems to have naturally very low cortisol levels. While I'm still not so good at getting our of negative thought spirals myself, Patri's pretty good at helping me get perspective and being cute and silly and helping me think about other things.

The only bad part is when I get upset about something that causes him to get irritated ;) When he gets aggressive about something that I'm already concerned about my cortisol levels tend to skyrocket, causing a similar effect with him ;P Thankfully we've both gotten much better at controlling these sorts of situations: since we both are conscious of it and try to be proactive, usually one or the other of us can keep perspective ;)

I consider myself very lucky to have ended up with someone who is so stable and caring and interested in helping me be happy :) It works, and helps me give a lot back to him. Since I have been much calmer and more stable myself, I've gotten much better at handling his moods. For example, he hasn't been sleeping well this last week, and as usually follows from that, he's been in a rather foul mood. I've been in a great mood and able to help him out of it some even though he's been being extra difficult ;)

p.s.I found this article while searching for the correct spelling for cortisol ;) I do have major issues with sugar addiction...