Females' emotionality as reflected in the excretion of the dopamine metabolite HVA during mental stress.

This paper describes the relationships between psychological assessments of emotionality and massfragmentographic measures of the dopamine metabolite homovanillic acid (HVA) in healthy boys and girls. Examination stress induced a significant rise in HVA excretion in both sexes. In girls, but not in boys, significant positive correlations were found between HVA excretion during stress and a set of measures of "negatively coloured" emotionality (distress, anxiety, lack of self-esteem, etc.) obtained at different points in time.