Approximately 200 youthful, male prison inmates underwent a laboratory procedure involving episodes of interpersonal stress. On each stress trial, inmate-subjects indicated their subjective feeling state and communicated a social counterresponse to the provoking experimenter. Four autonomic processes were also measured throughout these procedures. Analyses of these interrelated sources of data suggested that the characteristic inmate reaction pattern could be described as anxious, acquiescent, self-demeaning, and depressive-like; and that behavioral-autonomic data patterns revealed an unusual inverse relationship not ordinarily found in control subjects. The implications of these results for rehabilitation programs are discussed.
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