We are delighted to share that this week the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology published a new article by our group's PhD student Erik Ilkevič, Dr. Ingrida Zelionkaitė, Prof. Ramunė Grikšienė and their team: "Investigating associations between cortisol, testosterone and emotion regulation in healthy young men."
Although most of our research focuses on women's well-being, PhD student Erik Ilkevič explores men's emotions and their interaction with hormones. With this study we wanted to understand whether testosterone and cortisol levels in young men, as well as the interaction between them, are related to emotion regulation abilities. We studied emotion regulation using the classic cognitive reappraisal paradigm, in which participants were shown a variety of unpleasant images. Their task was to reinterpret the images they saw so that the images would affect them as little as possible.
Previous research has clearly shown that higher cortisol levels (for example, after acute stress) are associated with more effective use of cognitive reappraisal. Testosterone, meanwhile, has been linked to poorer emotion regulation, but there are no studies assessing the relationship between testosterone and cognitive reappraisal performance.
In this study we showed that even basal cortisol levels (i.e., not affected by stress or elevated by other means) are associated with more effective use of cognitive reappraisal. However, testosterone and the testosterone–cortisol interaction revealed no significant effects. That said, additional analyses suggested that these associations may exist but are too subtle and weak to be detected within the scope of this study.
It is also important to note that the association between higher cortisol levels and more effective emotion regulation was observed only among those men who used the cognitive reappraisal strategy more frequently in everyday life. Moreover, these associations were not observed when we presented extremely unpleasant images (e.g., severe bodily injuries). Thus, the results of this study are consistent with previous research on cortisol and emotion regulation and demonstrate the importance of the interaction between biological and psychological variables.
We could not have carried out this interdisciplinary study without the substantial contribution of colleagues from the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Philosophy of Vilnius University. We are very grateful to Dr. Eglė Mazgelytė, her supervisor Prof. Dovilė Karčiauskaitė and the rest of the team for performing the hormone analyses from saliva samples. We also warmly thank Dr. Violeta Cimalanskaitė-Kazlauskienė for selecting the appropriate psychological instruments and analysing their data.
The publication can be read here:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453026002751