Understanding the social world around us is important to function in today’s society. Gaining understanding can be achieved through cognitive empathy. In the current study, the main question ‘Is...Show moreUnderstanding the social world around us is important to function in today’s society. Gaining understanding can be achieved through cognitive empathy. In the current study, the main question ‘Is the effect of acute stress on the level of cognitive empathy in female students moderated by experienced childhood trauma?’ has been examined in 119 female students between 18 and 25 years old (M = 21.19, SD = 1.66). The relationship between acute stress, cognitive empathy and experienced childhood trauma has been examined with three sub-questions that focus on 1. the effect of acute stress on cognitive empathy, 2. the effect of subjective acute stress on the level of cognitive empathy and 3. Is the effect of acute stress on cognitive empathy moderated by experienced childhood trauma? These questions have been answered with an experimental study with a between-subjects design and a sequentially assigned stress or no stress manipulation provided by the Trier Social Stress Test (Kirschbaum et al., 1993). Before and during the manipulation acute stress has been measured with the Visual Analogue Scale (Freyd, 1923). Cognitive empathy has been measured with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (Thombs et al., 2009) was used for measuring experienced childhood trauma. The current study shows no significant results for the main question and its sub-questions. This contributes to other studies who used the RMET to measure cognitive empathy and didn’t find any significant results, meaning they should use a different instrument in future research. In addition, it is important to re-examine the main research question using physiological measures of acute stress. This study contributes to the scientific knowledge of this moderation effect, but more research is needed to get a better understanding and help for people who experienced childhood trauma.Show less
In adolescence, the quality of a parent-child relationship is especially important as it can affect the adolescent’s development in various ways. One of the areas of development it can influence is...Show moreIn adolescence, the quality of a parent-child relationship is especially important as it can affect the adolescent’s development in various ways. One of the areas of development it can influence is the development of the immune system. Parent-child relationships achieve this through causing the adolescent stress, as stress has been shown to negatively influence immune regulation and development. With this study we aimed to discover how the quality of parent-child relationships affect an adolescent’s immune response to acute stress and whether this relationship is different between males and females. The sample consisted of 79 participants, all Dutch adolescents, ages 14 to 16, with even numbers of boys and girls. Inflammatory cytokine levels (IL-6, IL-8, IL-10 and TNF-α) served to measure the size of the participant’s immune response to stress. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used to induce stress in participants and inflammatory cytokine levels were measured through a blood prick procedure at both pre- and post- TSST. The Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI) measured the quality of the parent-child relationship, where a majority of participants reported on their relationship with their mother. A Repeated Measures Analysis of Covariance (RMANCOVA) was performed, with the quality of the parent-child relationship and the adolescent’s BMI as covariates, and sex of the adolescent as the between-group variable. Quality of parent-child relationship did not affect the change in inflammatory cytokine levels between pre- and post- TSST, nor was this relationship different between boys and girls. However, IL-6 and TNF-α levels were generally higher in boys than in girls. To conclude, we did not find adolescent’s immune responses to stress to be affected by the quality of their parent-child relationship. We, furthermore, did not find the sex of the adolescent to play a role in the aforementioned relationship. Instead, we found that boys, ages 14 to 16, generally have higher levels of cytokines IL-6 and TNF-α than girls, ages 14 to 16. These findings further our understanding of sex-based differences in inflammatory responses, and sets precedent for further exploration of the mechanisms through which parent-child relationships affect an adolescent’s immune responses to stress.Show less
