Stress triggered by a learning experience can rapidly affect information processing (and, thus, the learning rate) through rapid actions of glucocorticoids in hippocampal memory circuits.
Stress has opposite effects on self-confidence and competitiveness in highly anxious and low anxious individuals, making the former become highly underconfident while the latter overconfident.
Birth-assigned men show more heightened physiological stress (cortisol) reactivity than birth-assigned women. Additionally patterns of cortisol reactivity appear to be distinct in individuals of specific sexual orientations.