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Abstract Positive self-evaluation is a major psychological resource modulating stress coping behavior. Sex differences have been reported in self-esteem as well as stress reactions, but so far their interactions have not been investigated. Therefore, we investigated sex-specific associations of self-esteem and stress reaction on behavioral, hormonal and neural levels. We applied a commonly used fMRI-stress task in 80 healthy participants. Men compared to women showed higher activation during stress in hippocampus, precuneus, superior temporal gyrus (STG) and insula. Furthermore, men outperformed women in the stress task and had higher cortisol and testosterone levels than women after stress. Self-esteem had an impact on precuneus, insula and STG activation during stress across the whole group. During stress, men recruit regions associated with emotion and stress regulation, self-referential processing and cognitive control more strongly than women. Self-esteem affects stress processing, however in a sex-independent fashion: participants with lower self-esteem show higher activation of regions involved in emotion and stress regulation, self-referential processing and cognitive control. Taken together, our data suggest that men are more engaged during the applied stress task. Across women and men, lower self-esteem increases the effort in emotion and stress processing and cognitive control, possibly leading to self-related thoughts in stressful situations.

The heterogeneous group of recreational drug users is usually inconspicuous in society. These individuals do not regard themselves as drug users in a conventional way and therefore hardly can be reached through traditional methods (e.g. heavy drug user studies). The benefits of psychological online research were examined by exploring the “hidden” population of recreational drug users. An international cross-continental online study was carried out surveying 9,268 recreational drug users from English and German speaking countries. The data was obtained via internet and evaluated by means of statistical inference, descriptive and structure-finding procedures. The research population collected online seems to differ in many variables from the “usual” clinical study population (e.g. age, sex). Results indicate a great degree of trust in online information and a strong use of the data highway (more than 72%) for getting information on substances. Besides the widely known advantages of using the internet for psychological research, experiences show strong evidence that the internet may not only be a new but in many cases also better tool for research in special psychological fields.