Megan Gunnar

Who they are

Megan Gunnar is Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. Her research asks how the body's stress response, measured chiefly through cortisol, develops over childhood and adolescence, and what role relationships play in regulating it, a line of work usually grouped under social buffering.

Her lab's 2025 study, published in Psychoneuroendocrinology with Filetti, Tsakonas, Donzella and Thomas, is the clearest recent demonstration of that idea. Two hundred and thirty-five adolescents aged eleven to fifteen went through an online version of the Trier Social Stress Test, a standard laboratory stressor built around public speaking and mental arithmetic in front of evaluators. Some went through it alongside a friend who was also being tested; others had a friend present purely as a supporter, watching but not participating. Cortisol reactivity dropped only in the first group. When a friend was present only to support, cortisol reactivity rose.

The distinction matters because everyday advice about stress often treats "having someone there" as a single, uniform kind of help. Gunnar's data suggest the body registers a meaningful difference between a companion who shares the exposure and an audience who does not, even when both are well-meaning. The study was pre-registered, a step still uncommon enough in this literature to be worth noting on its own.

Gunnar's broader body of work, spanning several decades, has mapped how early caregiving and adversity shape the developing stress-response system, work that runs through journal articles and handbook chapters rather than books.

Key papers

Gunnar has published no books. Her output is journal articles and handbook chapters.

Gunnar, M. R., & Quevedo, K. (2007), "The neurobiology of stress and development," Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 145-173.

Gunnar, M. R., & Donzella, B. (2002), "Social regulation of the cortisol levels in early human development," Psychoneuroendocrinology, 27(1-2), 199-220.

Filetti, C. R., Tsakonas, N. C., Donzella, B., Thomas, K. M., & Gunnar, M. R. (2025), "Share-the-load vs bring-your-own-judge: The effects of friends on social evaluative stress in early adolescence," Psychoneuroendocrinology. The study the Cliques Are a Stress Response article turns on: 235 adolescents aged eleven to fifteen went through an online Trier Social Stress Test; friend support lowered cortisol reactivity only when both friends underwent the stressor, and raised it when the friend was present purely as a supporter.

Key ideas

Cortisol reactivity to stress is regulated socially as well as biologically; who is present, and in what role, changes the body's response.

A friend who shares an ordeal lowers stress reactivity; a friend who merely supports from the sidelines can raise it.

Her 2025 study was pre-registered, unusual rigour for this literature.

Concepts on this site

social buffering, the central mechanism her research describes

tend-and-befriend

entitativity

digital loneliness

Find them elsewhere

Scholar profile carries a verified umn.edu email and states Professor of Child Psychology, University of Minnesota. No social accounts found

Checked 2026-09-10. Handles and affiliations go out of date, so treat this block as a snapshot rather than a standing fact.

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