August 3, 2000 

YOU MAY HAVE ALWAYS SUSPECTED IT, BUT A STUDY SUGGESTS THAT WOMEN DO COPE WITH STRESS DIFFERENTLY THAN MEN 

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA--A research team that includes a Penn State Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health, Dr. Laura Cousino Klein, has identified a broad biological and behavioral pattern that explains a key method used by women to cope with stress. 
"It seems that rather than responding in a fight-or-flight fashion when threatened, fearful or stressed, women may more often tend-and-befriend. Women are more likely to protect and nurture their young, and turn to family and friends for solace when they are stressed," explains Dr. Klein of Penn State's College of Health and Human Development.

By Donna Bozzo; Special to the Tribune; August 30, 2000 

Stress can have some costly consequences, but when it comes to handling it, some say it pays to be a woman. 

For decades, experts maintained that men and women handled stress in the same way--with a flight or fight response. But now researchers at Penn State University say not only do men and women deal with stress in different ways, women seem to have a natural advantage. 

"It seems that rather than responding in a fight-or-flight fashion when threatened, fearful or stressed, women may more often tend and befriend," says Dr. Laura Cousino Klein, a Penn State assistant professor of biobehavioral health. "Women are more likely to turn to family and friends for solace when they are stressed."

Men and Women React Differently to Stress By : Ferne Cherne

Published October 16, 2000 

For decades most medical and psychological research on stress has been conducted on men. This is now beginning to change. 

In the field of stress management, there was an additional excuse for not testing women: they supposedly would have to work around the menstrual cycles. So it was assumed, based only on male study participants, that females like men choose the "fight or flight" response when dealing with stress. 

Wrong. A team of researchers from UCLA reviewed hundreds of studies. They found women appear to behave in a "tend-and-befriend" manner. According to the study women "are inclined to protect their young -- the tend response or to turn to others for help- the befriend reaction." Men tend to act aggressively or flee as previous studies showed. The difference is apparent daily. Women try to mediate. They also turn to others to share or vent their problems rather than hold them tightly. To put it simply, women want to calm and soothe and they want to share problems or include others in finding solutions. 

Living in a household with one man and two future men, I am out-numbered, literally out-manned. This situation gives me a unique opportunity to study the male of the species at close range, though, and I have amassed a huge volume of notes on how males initiate their young into the mysterious ways of Men. 
First and foremost is the male's ability to fart and burp at will. This faculty is highly developed in many grown men, and it is repeatedly imitated by the young. Exactly why it is funny cannot be explained, but jokes like pull-my-finger and let's-see-who-can-burp-loudest are not only uproariously funny, they're funny forever. Grown men will still snigger and poke each other when they fart; when was the last time you saw two women belching competitively? This of course explains the popularity of the Three Stooges: Men enjoy seeing other men behave in ways they wish they could get away with. 
. . . ..
A recent study at UCLA suggests that women and men respond to threatening situations differently because of the hormone oxytocin, a chemical released in the brain, triggered by stress, which exerts a calming influence. Both men and women have oxytocin, but female estrogen enhances its effects, male androgens diminish it. So there's even more chemical evidence that men are violent, aggressive, and obnoxious by nature. 

But it also marks a broader shift in psychology, away from social explanations for human behavior. Burned by their postmillennial status as "soft" scientists unable to prescribe antidepressants, psychologists are turning from their field's humanistic roots and toward biochemical and genetic research. The unwillingness of insurance companies to pay for unlimited psychotherapy is also spurring the change. 

You arrive home from work 3 hours late after learning about your company's imminent downsizing initiative. Your child is cranky, the dog starts to yelp, and your spouse is fuming that you did not call.

Do you head for the liquor cabinet? Phone a friend? Lace up your running shoes? The answer may depend on your gender, according to a report in an upcoming issue of Psychological Review, a journal of the American Psychological Association. Based on a review of hundreds of behavioral and biological studies on how humans and animals respond to stress, the investigators report that the hormone oxytocin is a key to how men and women deal with stress. 

My wife often asks me why so many men are so boring. Every time she interviews prospective job applicants, it is the women who shine. They are alert, self-confident and keen to work on something new. The young women in our office have the same complaint - the men they meet are dorks, arrogantly self-centred or wimpishly wanting to please. Whichever way, that's not what bright young women want in a man. I say, blame their mothers and their fathers and hope that things continue to change. Men have got to find their balls without displaying them like rhesus monkeys. The variation is not all that great, and women want more than the body beautiful in a future mate. 

Today's men and women are caught between a rock and a hard place. To be attractive to women, men are expected to be strong, competitive, sexually potent; yet to be acceptable, they must be empathetic, communicative and non-aggressive. To be attractive to men, women are expected to be nubile, sexy and beautiful; yet they must also be able to bring in a buck or two so the family income is sufficient for a decent life.
. . . .
Yes, men and women are biologically different; yes, men have a higher dose of testoserone than women which makes them grow their dangling sexual tackle, makes them physically stronger, more aggressive, more likely to take risks; yes, men and women respond and communicate in different ways that make for some funny situations and mistakes; and, yes, we should not try to make boys into girls, women into men, not forge an androgynous culture in which that essential gender difference is blurred. 
But sex difference is not the same as the sexism which derives from gender difference. One is biological fact, a physical vulnerability of women during gestation and child-bearing and a hormonal difference in strength and temperament. Sexism is that whole edifice of inferiority and subjugation which must be demolished if we are to thrive and prosper in the new millennium. 

Differences in behavior between men and women aren't just fodder for stand-up comedians. Psychologists and geneticists have plenty of theories of their own. 

Take the way men tend to lapse into a sullen funk when stressed or angry, whereas women more often seek the company or solace of friends. This sort of male behavior isn't necessarily maladjusted, it might simply be a response to a hormone called oxytocin. Women have higher levels of oxytocin. Labor also causes an oxytocin surge that's believed to be essential for mother-infant bonding, earning oxytocin the nickname, the "cuddle hormone." 

In the life stories of great figures associated with love such as Venus, Buddha and Jesus, the manner in which they were born is presented as a critical phase. By contrast, the lives of famous politicians, writers, artists, scientists, business people and clergymen, their biographies often start with details about their childhood and education. Could this difference indicate that birth is a crucial time in the development of our capacity to love? 

The biological sciences of the 1990s are now showing that the first hour following birth is a critical period in the development of the capacity to love. While a mother and her newborn baby are close to each other after birth they have not yet eliminated from their systems the hormones which both of them secreted during the birth process. The two are in a special hormonal balance which will last only a short time and will never recur. If we consider the properties of these different hormones and the time it takes to eliminate them, we will understand that each hormone has a specific role to play in the interaction between mother and baby. 

These same hormones are involved in any aspect of love. Recent data drawn from different branches of scientific literature presents a new vision of sexuality. There is a hormone of love, and also a reward system which operates each time we, as sexual animals, do something which is necessary for the survival of the species. 

The gist of this study is that men and women respond differently to being stressed out and it has to do with instincts and hormones. The findings are a warning for men and a thumbs up for women.

What would women be without their girlfriends? Well, a lot more stressed for one thing.

According to a new study out of UCLA, women don't suffer the ill effects of stress as much as men do because they respond to it by seeking comfort in their children or in the company of their female friends.

Quick quiz: Would you rather run 75 miles or have sex three times per week for a year? Research shows that both activities burn the same number of calories. (7,500, to be exact).

We often think that something that feels good can’t possibly be good for us. Now it’s time to think again.Sex in a loving, intimate relationship has numerous health benefits. 

In women, for example, the sexual act triggers the release of oxytocin. Oxytocin promotes feelings of affection and triggers that nurturing instinct.

Ann: Brian and I believe passionately in the concept of leadership and the part it has to play in moulding the future of our society.

Brian: And that women and men bring profoundly different gifts to leadership……for three decades equality has been the cry in the world of work. And with this cry for equality has come the notion……the politically correct notion that the sexes were the same...and yet……
. . . . 
Men control the aggression created by their testosterone by inventing rules. Offside in football, no-ball in cricket and the Geneva Convention in battle. Other men with more testosterone then try to break these rules. Rebellion against the status quo is a function of testosterone. The rules of job and status mean much to men. They are biologically built take part in team games in which one side wins and the other side loses. 
Brian: Because women are less competitive and have more empathy, they can identify better with the objectives and goals of others. This makes them much better at non-directive coaching.
Oxytocin is one of the chemical pair bonding agents between mother and child. I don't have much of this. Lower levels of testosterone plus higher levels of oxytocin mean that women define themselves more through relationships. 

Three decades of equal opportunity have barely dented fundamental sex differences. Why Men Don't Iron reveals that across the world, prominent neuro-scientists are beginning to disprove the notion that men's and women's brains are the same.

Candice Bergen has now admitted what her TV character, Murphy Brown, never did: Fathers matter. Social scientists have never been more sure, because fathers help boys become responsible men and teach girls good men will love them even if they don’t “‘put out.’” 
And when men——even men who have been good fathers——divorce their wives, they usually end up divorcing their children as well. Two leading family experts, Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, find that “‘over time, the vast majority of children [of divorce] will have little or no contact with their fathers.’” So if we care about the future of our kids, we should care about finding the secrets to marriages that last through “‘sickness and health,’” through “‘better and worse.’”
. . . 
But social science research on intact marriages finds that in real marriages, male headship is simply a fact. Most men and women seek things in a mate that render something like male headship inevitable. If we care about marriages that work, the Baptists just may have something to teach us. 
. . . . 
Women are genetically pre-programmed to be more affiliative. Interpersonal attachment is a bigger deal for women than men, and that’s true in all cultures and times. It has an adaptive significance for the survival of the species. If women didn’t attach, babies wouldn’t survive.…… If we have one-half of the human race that’s more preprogrammed for attachment, then that’s the half that’s going to be more vulnerable.’”