PEOPLE WHO stay cool in a crisis may be natural-born heroes, according to psychiatrists investigating how soldiers behave in stressful situations.
Blood tests on war veterans showed that a minority were almost oblivious to stress and were able to think clearly in spite of the dangerous situations they found themselves in.
The research has led to a test that can predict which people will respond well in a stressful situation and those who are more likely to be panicked.
Deane Aikins, a psychiatrist at Yale University, took blood samples from soldiers before and after exercises designed to test their skills at evading capture and enduring interrogation. In the majority of men, levels of the stress hormone cortisol rose sharply during the exercise. But Mr Aikins found a few men whose stress levels hardly changed during the exercise, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago yesterday.
Interviews with the soldiers after the exercise showed that while all found the experience unpleasant, only those with low cortisol levels said they did not find it particularly distressing.
Further tests revealed the men who coped best had higher levels of a substance called neuropeptide Y, which reduces levels of cortisol in the body and blocks feelings of stress.