Urinary Catecholamines and Stress in Male and Female Police Cadets

Urinary catecholamine levels in male and female State Police cadets were studied at monthly intervals over a five-month training period to compare responses to occupational stress. Under these closely matched conditions, the females were found to have significantly lower adrenaline levels than the males, as well as a smaller range of response. These differences were consistent for each of the five months. While there was a significant trend for female noradrenaline values to be higher than those for males across the five month period, female values were significantly higher than male values on only one of the five monthly test dates. There were no differences between males and females in range of noradrenaline excretion. These results suggest that compared to males, female urinary adrenaline levels are less reactive to stress. Moreover, this difference between males and females is not attributable to disparities in external stressors or social factors

Lower emotional awareness is associated with greater early adversity and faster life history strategy

Recent theoretical work suggests that emotional awareness (EA) depends on the harshness/predictability of early social interactions – and that low EA may actually be adaptive in harsh environments that lack predictable interpersonal interactions. In evolutionary psychology, this process of psychological “calibration” to early environments corresponds to life history strategy (LHS). In this paper, we tested the relationship between EA and LHS in 177 (40 male) individuals who completed the levels of emotional awareness scale (LEAS), Arizona Life History Battery (short form: K-SF-42), and two measures of early abuse/neglect. Significantly lower EA was observed in those with faster LHS and who had experienced greater early adversity. Notably, LEAS was associated with differences in 1) general reflective cognition, and 2) emotional support from parents during childhood. This suggests that EA may be learned during development based on the benefits of cognitive reflection in environments with different levels of harshness and social predictability