Pituitary-adrenal and sympathetic-adrenal correlates of distress and effort

Measures of adrenalin, noradrenalin and cortisol excretion and self-reports of various aspects of subjective arousal obtained for 24 female and 24 male university students during five experimental and three baseline conditions were submitted to factor analysis. Two factors were extracted: a “distress factor” with high positive loadings in subjective variables indicative of negative affect and a moderately high positive loading in cortisol excretion; and an “effort factor” with high positive loadings primarily in subjective variables indicative of action-proneness and in adrenalin excretion. The dissociation between pituitary-adrenal and sympathetic-adrenal activity is illustrated by data from (1) a monotonous vigilance task inducing both effort and distress, and a concomitant increase of adrenalin as well as cortisol excretion, and (2) a self-paced reaction time task inducing effort but no distress, and a concomitant increase in adrenalin but decrease in cortisol excretion.