Columbia University psychologists have found that women cope better with stress when someone close to them experiences stress. They described their observations in a magazine article. Boundaries in Psychology.
For the study, the researchers selected 70 female students and 102 heteronormative romantic couples living together. The students in the experiment had to speak before the commission with a partner who evaluated the speech in the same way as the topic or vice versa, or with no evaluation at all. In the first case, both physiological parameters and the subject’s subjective assessment showed the lowest stress level.
In the second part of the study, the participants kept a diary for two weeks in which they recorded their stress factors and evaluated the degree of their experience. As it turned out, 99% of women withstood the stress experienced with a partner much easier if the partner was as anxious as the woman. Among men, by contrast, 58% experienced higher anxiety when their partner was worried about the same thing. Overall, women reported higher levels of anxiety than men.
Previous research has shown that men and women behave differently in stressful situations, the study’s authors explained – the former tied to a “fight or flight” strategy, the second – “take care and make friends.” It has been suggested that women may react less sharply mentally and physiologically to shared stress. However, this study found that women’s stress levels were generally higher, but decreased if their partner was also showing anxiety. The study’s authors suggest that females may have been evolutionarily adapted to combine to protect themselves from threats, and this is best done with a so-called shared reality—a shared feeling and judgment about something.