Plasma and Urinary 17-OHCS Responses to Motion Pictures

A serious limitation in efforts to study emotional processes in normal human subjects has been the lack of experimental methods for eliciting emotional responses in a predictable or systematic manner. While studies of persons undergoing naturally occurring stressful life experiences have been relatively numerous and fruitful, deliberate attempts to produce acute emotional responses in the laboratory have met with much difficulty in the way of supplying standard techniques for psychophysiological studies. The present study represents an exploration of the practicability of using motion pictures as a relatively standard means of stimulus presentation which, hopefully, might produce changes in emotional state, as reflected both by psychological and physiological responses, particularly by changes in plasma and urinary 17-hydroxycorticosteroid (17-OHCS) levels. Some of the psychological aspects of this study are reported elsewhere in detail.^1,2 This report deals primarily with the detailed endocrinological findings and is especially concerned with the crucial problems