Fight or Flight or Make Friends

I was reading this article tonight, and I was interested in the different reactions exhibited in a high-stress situation that was based on gender.  The article mentions the "fight-or-flight" reaction that we all know about.  Apparently men tend to exhibit this reaction.  And interestingly, when Walter Cannon developed the categorization of "flight-or-flight", and when others conducted studies about it, the research was conducted using primarily male test subjects.  So the researchers got their information from the male test subjects and then generalized it to the entire population.  They were using data found by studying men and telling both men and women that this is the way you react.  Then as it turns out, women do not tend to act that way in the face of stress.  They have a very different reaction.  So if those researchers back in Cannon's day and beyond had used a more representative sample of test subjects, certainly more than just the "fight-or-flight" reaction would have been studied and discussed.

Interestingly enough, but perhaps not surprising, women tend to react in a much different manner.  While men tend to either run or fight, women try to befriend you and possibly talk you out of the situation.  The article goes into more detail about that, so I would encourage you to check it out if you are interested.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/gender-differences-in-responses-stress-it-boils-down-single-gene

Gender Differences in Responses to Stress: It Boils Down to a Single Gene

Fight-or-Flight vs Tend-and-Befriend

Published on March 17, 2012 by Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D. in Games Primates Play

You are walking alone in a dark alley late at night when, all of a sudden, you feel the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of your neck and hear a voice saying: "Give me your wallet or I will kill you." What do you do? The answer is: it depends on whether you are a man or a woman. If you are a man, you either run away as quick as you can or you turn around and punch the guy in the face. If you are a woman, you try to talk yourself out of the situation: "Are you sure you want to do this?" you ask the robber, or "If you put the gun away, we can talk about the situation and I will see what I can do to help you."

According to some psychologists, there is basic difference in the way men and women respond to social stress: for men, it's either "fight or flight" while for women it's "tend and befriend." Physiologist Walter Cannon - a pioneer of research on stress - argued in the 1930s that "fight-or-flight" is a universal physiological response to stress shown not only by all humans, but by animals as well.  This response is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system - the part of our nervous system that deals with automatic functions such as breathing. Under stress, this system is activated, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, hastening breathing, and otherwise readying you to face down your enemy or to run. Thousands of studies inspired by Cannon described and documented this response in a variety of species and situations. The vast majority of these studies, however, were conducted with males.

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