Abstract
A diverse body of literature suggests that social contacts have direct regulatory influences on biological rhythms such as the diurnal cortisol decline. Although our previous prospective research has found a link between social contacts and cortisol secretion, a manipulation of social contacts is necessary to definitively evaluate causality. The current study involved a laboratory-based manipulation of daily social contacts. Fifty-three females experienced both high and low social contact conditions in the lab while collecting ambulatory data on their social contact and cortisol levels. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling, such that cortisol production on high social contact days was compared within person to cortisol production on low social contact days. Although the manipulation successfully altered daily social contacts, it had no significant effect on cortisol slope. However, cortisol slope differences were significant when participants had contact with someone whom they usually saw every day. Social relationships that provide daily contact may have the strongest influence on biological rhythms.
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Notes
We repeated our analyses using a 3-level HLM. The results were unchanged: cortisol slope was not significantly different between manipulation conditions, while daily contact remained a significant moderator of the manipulation’s effect (P < 0.05). Because diurnal cortisol slope, and not cortisol level at any one particular point in time is the outcome of interest, and because a 2-level model is a more parsimonious way to model the data (i.e. requires fewer parameter estimates), we chose to report results from the 2-level model.
Although less consistent with our overall hypothesis about the regulatory effect of social contacts on the diurnal rhythm of cortisol secretion, we also examined the effect of the manipulation on total daily cortisol production and daily area under the curve. Those analyses did not yield any significant effects.
Because previous studies have shown that daily social contact and cortisol output rhythms become uncoupled in episodes of clinical depression (Stetler et al. 2004; Stetler and Miller 2005), we wondered if high levels of depressive symptoms may have muted the effect of our manipulation. The data did not support this explanation: the severity of depression symptoms (CESD score) did not predict cortisol responses to the manipulation (γ1j = −0.001, SE = 0.001, t(50) = −1.00, p = 0.32).
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Acknowledgements
Preparation of this manuscript was made possible by NIH Grant Number P20 RR−016461 from the National Center for Research Resources (CAS). The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Human Early Learning Partnership at UBC (CAS, GEM) and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (GEM). We would also like to thank Nicolas Rohleder, Jane Woo, Adeline Sawsurachai, Jennifer Munch, Shivani Nair, Khrystyna Savchuk, Erica Bennett and Kim Johnson for their assistance on the project.
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Stetler, C.A., Miller, G.E. Social integration of daily activities and cortisol secretion: a laboratory based manipulation. J Behav Med 31, 249–257 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-007-9143-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-007-9143-2