Fig. 1: The moderating effect of anticipatory cortisol response to acute stress on the relationship between life stress and SCL-90 score.
From: The interplay of acute cortisol response and trait affectivity in associating with stress resilience
This moderating analysis was conducted using the PROCESS macro implemented in SPSS (pre-set Model No. 1). The test was two-sided. We conducted a Holm–Bonferroni correction procedure to adjust for the two types of cortisol response (anticipatory and peak) analysed. The anticipatory cortisol response (T3 minus T2) significantly and negatively moderated the relationship between major life stress and SCL-90 score (F1,139 = 5.12, bootstrapped CI = −10.6462 to −0.9843, P = 0.04), while controlling for pre-TSST (T2) cortisol level and daily hassle. At a lower cortisol response, major life stress correlated positively with SCL-90 score (Spearman’s ρ = 0.47, P = 0.001). This relationship became a positive trend at an intermediate level of cortisol increase (Spearman’s ρ = 0.26, P = 0.07), and insignificant at a high level of cortisol increase (P = 0.82). The relationship is plotted separately for participants with low, medium and high levels of anticipatory cortisol response, divided according to 33% and 67% percentiles. Note that the x and y axes include negative values due to the intercept and nuisance variables being regressed out from the dependent and independent variables in the partial correlation analysis. ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05; NS, not significant.
