Differential Susceptibility to the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Working Memory, Empathy, and Perceived Stress: The Role of Cortisol and Resilience

Abstract

There are important individual differences in adaptation and reactivity to stressful challenges. Being subjected to strict social confinement is a distressful psychological experience leading to reduced emotional well-being, but it is not known how it can affect the cognitive and empathic tendencies of different individuals. Cortisol, a key glucocorticoid in humans, is a strong modulator of brain function, behavior, and cognition, and the diurnal cortisol rhythm has been postulated to interact with environmental stressors to predict stress adaptation. The present study investigates in 45 young adults (21.09 years old, SD = 6.42) whether pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol indices, overall diurnal cortisol secretion (AUCg) and cortisol awakening response (CAR) can predict individuals’ differential susceptibility to the impact of strict social confinement during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on working memory, empathy, and perceived stress. We observed that, following long-term home confinement, there was an increase in subjects’ perceived stress and cognitive empathy scores, as well as an improvement in visuospatial working memory. Moreover, during confinement, resilient coping moderated the relationship between perceived stress scores and pre-pandemic AUCg and CAR. In addition, in mediation models, we observed a direct effect of AUCg and an indirect effect of both CAR and AUCg, on change in perceived self-efficacy. These effects were parallelly mediated by the increase in working memory span and cognitive empathy. In summary, our findings reveal the role of the diurnal pattern of cortisol in predicting the emotional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting a potential biomarker for the identification of at-risk groups following public health crises.

Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, and the Effect of Group Dynamics: A Longitudinal Study of Young Men during Compulsory Military Training in Lithuania

“…Firstly, our research took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, with social distancing measures between and within military units being applied. This may have become an additional stressor which served to influence hair cortisol levels and perceived stress measurements, as has been shown in previous studies [56,57]. The results of the second phase (after four months of training) of our study and of Model 2 should be interpreted with caution, as the information contained there was collected during the national COVID-19 lockdown and it was not possible to have a control group to evaluate this effect.…”

Hair cortisol change at COVID-19 pandemic onset predicts burnout among health personnel

“…In other words, the strength of the established associations was similar for all degrees of cortisol change among participants. By contrast, a study on 45 undergraduate psychology course students examined pre-pandemic salivary cortisol indices on the psychological impact of strict social confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Baliyan et al, 2021 ). They showed that 41% of the variance in during-confinement perceived stress was predicted by total diurnal cortisol release, resilience score, and their interaction.…”

Changes in youth mental health, psychological wellbeing, and substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid review

“…Similar to the findings regarding depression and anxiety, 23 of the included publications (72%) indicated higher levels of stress or psychological stress among youth during the pandemic. Among the nine longitudinal studies on these problems, six indicated higher levels of (dis)stress (Baliyan et al, 2021;Breaux et al, 2021;Elmer et al, 2020;Gray et al, 2020;Magson et al, 2021;Savage et al, 2020), two indicated no significant changes (Copeland et al, 2021;Munasinghe et al, 2020), and one indicated a decrease in "acute stress" (but increases in depression and anxiety symptoms as reported above) (Y. .…”