Figure 1.

Schematic representation of the procedure. Following a 10-min preparation, participants in the social stressor condition gave an 8-min unstructured speech on abortion after which they counted backwardly from 1000 in decrements of 13 for 2 min in front of a male and a female “judge” in white lab coats (total duration of social stressor = 10 min). A video camera relayed the speaker's image to a TV screen that the speaker could see while talking. In the control condition, participants rested for about 20 min. The startle test was initiated twenty minutes after the end of the social stressor. It started with six habituation startle stimuli, immediately followed by the FSD test. The FSD test started with an additional six startle stimuli (under lighted conditions) followed by three alternating 60-sec blocks of startle stimuli delivered under lighted conditions or in complete darkness, counterbalanced across subjects. The saliva samples were collected and BP was measured at the five following time points; prior to speech preparation (t -2 min), immediately after and 9 min after the social stressor (t +23 min and t + 32 min), before startle habituation (t +41 min), and after the dark/light startle test (t + 55 min). In addition, subjects were asked to indicate their level of distress on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all distressed) to 10 (extremely distressed) prior to the speech preparation (t -2 min), just before (t +11 min) and after (t +23 min) the social stressor.