Psychosomatic Medicine 24:300-311 (1962)
© 1962 American Psychosomatic Society

Variations in Magnitude of Emotion: A Method Applied to Anxiety and Hostility During Phases of the Menstrual Cycle

¹ Department of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine Cincinnati, Ohio.

The sensitivity of a newly developed method of measuring immediate affect levels from small samples of speech is demonstrated by use of the method (in 5 subjects) to detect the effect on personality of the biological rhythms of the menstrual cycle. The method employs separate scoring scales for each affect to be measured. Psychoanalytic insights and principles are built into the scales, as exemplified by the verbal themes considered relevant to each affect and by the relative weights assigned verbal items. Extensive reliability and validity studies have been reported elswhere.

Four of the 5 women showed statistically significant rhythmical changes in the magnitude of at least one of the affects--anxiety, hostility outward, or hostility inward--during the sexual cycle. The changes in these affects were not similar among the women. Those psychophysiological rhythms more statistically significant appeared within women studied during a larger number of menstrual cycles. This suggests that data from more cycles tended to amplify the effects of the sexual cycle on the emotions measured by minimizing and randomizing the effect of transient intrapsychic and interpersonal events. The individual variations in anxiety and hostility levels during the sexual cycle should be accounted for by personality studies focusing on psychosexual development and conflicts.

There was a tendency for the levels of tension measured--specifically, anxiety and hostility inward--to decrease transiently around the time of ovulation. The presumed cause is some hormonal change; whether it is ovarian or gonadatropic (luteinizing hormone) or both has yet to be ascertained.

This article has been cited by other articles:

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