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Womenkind: the stress-friendly species

by Jennifer Russo
New research suggests women handle stress better than men.

Stress evokes very powerful reactions, but researchers recently revealed that stress-coping tactics are very different in men and women. A recent study by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), published in the July 2000 edition of US journal, Psychological Review, claims that the clichéd ‘flight or fight’ response to stress applies only to men, not women. In the face of stress, women display a very different reaction, focusing on social relations – what the researchers termed a ‘tend and befriend’ response.

According to a report released by UCLA, the study ‘based its findings on analysis of hundreds of biological and behavioural studies of response to stress by thousands of humans and animal subjects’. It was revealed that rather than fleeing or becoming belligerent as was previously assumed, women seek social contact, especially with other women, and spend time nurturing their children, to cope with stress.

Stress, the difference

In a stressful situation, both sexes produce the hormone oxytocin. Shelley E. Taylor, the study’s main researcher, suggests that this hormone has a significant effect on the body and ‘Animals and people with high levels of oxytocin are calmer, more relaxed, more social and less anxious. In several species, oxytocin leads to maternal behaviour and to affiliation.’ But the manner in which this hormone reacts with the gender-specific hormones oestrogen and testosterone, the study suggests, marks an end to the similarities between male and female stress. The testosterone in men counteracts the calming effects of oxytocin, while women's oestrogen enhances it.

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