Psychopathic Personality Traits and Cortisol Response to Stress

Previous research has indicated that blunted cortisol production is associated with the existence of psychopathic personality traits in men but not women. The current study explored whether prior null results for women were related to the latency of the cortisol stress response. In addition, the current study tested whether psychopathic personality traits were related to inhibited cortisol production differentially among men and women depending on the nature of the stressor. A mixed-sex sample of 145 participants characterized by high (36 men, 37 women) and low (34 men, 38 women) scores on a screening measure of psychopathic personality traits were randomly assigned to either a performance-based stressor task or a social rejection stressor task. Salivary hormone samples were taken just prior to task onset (baseline) and at 0, 20, 40, and 60 min post-stressor. Results indicated that both men and women characterized by psychopathic personality traits exhibited blunted stress-induced cortisol to the performance-based task in comparison with controls at 20 min post-stressor. The social rejection task induced an immediate cortisol response post-stressor in the male controls only. Results suggest that deficient cortisol production in response to stress might be another important neurobiological feature associated with psychopathic traits.