U.S.

The Stress Gender Gap

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 19, 2000 / 11:13 AM EDT / CBS

A recently released study indicates that the differences in how males and females deal with stress are rooted in biology and evolution. Some scientists, CBS News Correspondent Sandra Huges reports, say they have proved that women cope with stress far differently and possibly better than men.

Since the 30's, scientific wisdom has held that men and women alike respond to stress with the fight or flight reaction, an outpouring of hormones that get a person to gear-up for battle or just run away.

That view is being questioned by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles. Citing dozens of human and animal studies, they suggest there is a hard-wired tendency for females to handle stress by nurturing their young and seeking social contact, especially with other females. This reaction they call tend and befriend.

Such tendencies may explain why, for example, women are more likely to telephone friends in a crisis, or why "women ask for directions and men don't," lead researcher Shelley E. Taylor, a UCLA psychology professor, told CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv. "Men and women do have some reliably different responses to stress."

The "tend-and-befriend" pattern may even keep stressed women calmer and explain why they live longer, on average, than men.

They suggested the "tend-and-befriend" pattern may be linked to the hormone oxytocin, which is released during stress and has been shown to make rats and humans calmer, less afraid and more social. Women apparently have more of this hormone, which seems to lead people to want to be with others.

Men secrete oxytocin too, but male hormones appeared to reduce its effect, while the female hormone estrogen amplifies it, Professor Taylor said.

Two dozen studies showed that after a stressful work day, women were more likely to "plop down on the ground with their kids and hug 'em," while men had a greater tendency to seek privacy or to argue with family members, Taylor said.

The behavior differences may be survival strategies dating back to the days when men were more likely to be "on the front lines" against predators while women were "wrapping up offspring and getting them out of the way," Taylor said.

But, as Alice Eagley, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, points out, "Different behaviors can be learned on the job. Women learn how to cope with social behaviors. So we don't know how much to attribute this difference in behavior to learning and roles as opposed to hormonal in behavior."

On the other hand, biological factors may help explain why people with strong social networks appear to live longer and are healthier than isolated people, and why men are more prone to murder, drug and alcohol abuse and stress-related disorders such as hypertension, Taylor said.

The study will be published late this year or early next year in The Psycological Review of the American Pychological Association.