Endocrine Correlates of Personality Traits: A Comparison between Emotionally Stable and Emotionally Labile Healthy Young Men

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Abstract
An initial sample of 120 healthy young men was screened by a personality questionnaire and 15 subjects each with highest and lowest scores respectively on emotionality (emotionally labile, EL subjects and emotionally stable, ES subjects) were recruited for a study on the relationship between the degree of emotionality and the basal secretion of stress-sensitive hormones during nighttime. The nocturnal urinary excretion of cortisol, testosterone, adrenaline, noradrenaline and melatonin was measured over a period of 5 consecutive nights. The average amounts of each hormone excreted per night were not different between the two extreme groups. The variability of the excretion during the 5 nights of cortisol and testosterone, but not of adrenaline, noradrenaline and melatonin, was significantly higher in EL compared to ES subjects. The larger fluctuations in the nocturnal secretion of these two (and no other) hormones in EL subjects indicate that emotional lability is associated with a more labile regulation of cortisol and testosterone secretion. The observed intraindividual variability of basal stress hormone secretion may contribute to the vast interindividual variability noticed in psychoneuroendocrine stress research, especially in emotionally labile subjects.

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