Women don't have fight or flight..? [Answered: FALSE]

[visceral]

taken from the text of an email:

 

This long-overdue and very welcome question is rightly directed toward the

current crisis on Wall Street, focusing on evidence that came out in the

last decade from Dr. Shelley Taylor's experiments proving that women do not

have a testosterone-elicited "fight or flight" response. Women's response to

stress instead produces the hormone oxytocin (generated in a woman's labor

process and also in breast feeding), and instead of taking huge and

dangerous risks, women tend to the children and collaborate with each other,

finding the "big picture" instead of short term unstable solutions.

 

That doesn't make sense to me, everyone has a fight or flight mechanism, it's induced by adrenaline, not testosterone.

 

Also, don't men also work as a unit in dangerous times?

[ParanoiA]

I don't think they're saying women don't have a fight or flight response in an emergency, and it's their use of the word "testosterone" that I believe suggests that.

 

I think they're saying that in a bad situation, women are less likely to leap into fight or flight in reaction, and instead calculate and analyze and make a better long term decision, even if it means a short term discomfort. Whereas men are more likely to answer directly to their testosterone and protective tendencies and react without as much reverence to any long term result. Both will still run from a rabid wolf, fueled by adrenaline.

 

That's what it sounds like they're saying, to me, probably because I've always wondered something similar. Seems like women have a superior capacity for doing what it takes to stay alive and protect their children - particularly self sacrifice. But that's purely speculative from personal experience.

[Mokele]

It's absolute, utter bullshit.

 

First, testosterone has NOTHING to do with the fight or flight response. That's adrenaline.

 

Second, women *do* have testosterone, just at lower levels.

 

Third, and more importantly, adrenaline is only a small part of the fight-or-flight response. The most important part is the sympathetic nervous system, and I can guarantee that women have this, because I just spent several weeks picking these nerves out of the corpse of a 93-year old woman.

 

Morbid Mokele

[visceral]

Isn't it adrenaline that stimulates the SNS during fight or flight, though?

 

I know women have testosterone, but only a tiny amount...

 

If you don't mind me asking, why were you removing nerves from a corpse?

[iNow]

Mokele is spot on. Adrenaline may magnify the response in the sympathetic nervous system, but it sure doesn't create it. It's really the nervous system response that causes the adrenaline to be released, and the adrenaline has more of an impact on blood flow and muscle activity to sustain fast and unanticipated movement or push blood to areas which may have been injured during an attack (like a bite or slash from a bear, for example).

 

Also, since he's a biologist, I presume his picking out of nerve cells from the corpse had something to do with his research (which relates to fast twitch muscle activity IINM).

[D H]

Experiment: Throw a spider on your girlfriend/wife/whatever. (It's Friday the 13th, after all. You can make up for it tomorrow on Valentine's Day.)

[Prabbit22m]

How will I be able to make up for it if she won't let me back in the house?

[Mokele]

Isn't it adrenaline that stimulates the SNS during fight or flight, though?

 

Other way around - the SNS stimulates the adrenal glands.

 

If you don't mind me asking, why were you removing nerves from a corpse?

 

I was taking Medical Anatomy (the one first-year medical students take), which includes cadaver dissection.

 

I presume his picking out of nerve cells from the corpse had something to do with his research (which relates to fast twitch muscle activity IINM).

 

Teaching, actually. In our program, everyone takes Medical Anatomy, then teaches it for the next 2 years. My research is currently focused on frogs, but they do indeed possess mostly fast-twitch muscle.

[ParanoiA]

Sounds like it's alluding to "tend-and-befriend", which Shelley Taylor has written about prolifically. Here's an abstract from a 2000 publication on the subject (sorry I don't have the spare cash to actually buy it):

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10941275

 

The human stress response has been characterized, both physiologically and behaviorally, as "fight-or-flight." Although fight-or-flight may characterize the primary physiological responses to stress for both males and females, we propose that, behaviorally, females' responses are more marked by a pattern of "tend-and-befriend." Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process. The biobehavioral mechanism that underlies the tend-and-befriend pattern appears to draw on the attachment-caregiving system, and neuroendocrine evidence from animal and human studies suggests that oxytocin, in conjunction with female reproductive hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms, may be at its core. This previously unexplored stress regulatory system has manifold implications for the study of stress.

 

There's some truth to it, but it sounds like whoever wrote that email did to Shelley what Tim "The Toolman" Taylor did to Wilson's moral lectures.

[Mokele]

The paper in question merely suggests an *extra* response by females to longer-term stress. It actually explicitly spells out that both females and males display the same response to immediate, short-term stress (like a monster jumping out of a bush).

[ParanoiA]

Right, exactly. And the email paragraph in the OP is in reference to the crisis on Wall Street, not a short-term stress. That's why I think they got sloppy with the language and mangled Taylor's verbiage, but they're clearly not talking about a short-term monster in the bush scenario.

 

Here's something else I found on the subject that would seem to support the "testosterone-elicited" qualifier describing the fight-or-flight nature of males as compared to females, used in the OP:

 

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/mccarthy.html

 

Taylor et al. (2000) first proposed the idea of a unique female stress response which they termed "tend-and-befriend." The tend-and-befriend response is characterized as an oxytocin mediated stress response cascade. There are numerous biochemical and evolutionary explanations for this unique female stress response that would have increased the survival of females and their offspring under conditions of stress and hence increased the chances of subsequent reproduction. Estrogen has been found to increase the effects of oxytocin already in excess in females as compared with males. Testosterone and vasopressin, the counterparts of estrogen and oxytocin, present during the male stress response, "fight-or-flight," have been found to exhibit the opposite effects of oxytocin[/b'].

 

I think the author is really just guilty of making absolutes out of generalities.

Edited February 14, 2009 by ParanoiA

[Mokele]

Which is precisely why scientists are often so leery of talking to the media - because they *always* get it wrong.

[D H]

I think the author is really just guilty of making absolutes out of generalities.[/quote']Which is precisely why scientists are often so leery of talking to the media - because they *always* get it wrong.

 

ParanoiA: Correct me if I'm wrong. Mokele: I gather that the author ParanoiA was talking about was the author of the study (Lauren A. McCarthy, and by inference, Shelley Taylor), not the author of the unreferenced quote in the OP.

 

Given the statements in that report (see ParanoiA's post), this has the look and feel of politically motivated pseudoscience.

[visceral]

Other way around - the SNS stimulates the adrenal glands.

 

 

 

I was taking Medical Anatomy (the one first-year medical students take), which includes cadaver dissection.

 

 

 

Teaching, actually. In our program, everyone takes Medical Anatomy, then teaches it for the next 2 years. My research is currently focused on frogs, but they do indeed possess mostly fast-twitch muscle.

 

I thought you had a nerve that went directly to your adrenal medulla, and the substances released caused all the SNS effects?

[ParanoiA]

ParanoiA: Correct me if I'm wrong. Mokele: I gather that the author ParanoiA was talking about was the author of the study (Lauren A. McCarthy, and by inference, Shelley Taylor), not the author of the unreferenced quote in the OP.

 

Given the statements in that report (see ParanoiA's post), this has the look and feel of politically motivated pseudoscience.

 

The author I was talking about was the OP email paragraph. It seems that author took the research study from Taylor and made absolute statements out of it like "proving that women do not have a testosterone-elicited "fight or flight" response".

 

And then further, McCarthy seems to support the author's (albeit carelessly written) notion that testosterone could affect the nature of the male's fight-or-flight aggressive tendency.

 

In other words, there is research to support the background the author uses, but is being entirely mangled for political points.

[D H]

Oh, really?

 

Tend and Befriend

In threatening times, people seek positive social relationships, because such contacts provide protection to maintain one’s own safety and that of one’s offspring. This tend-and-befriend account of social responses to stress is the theoretical basis for our work. Until recently, the biosocial mechanisms underlying human affiliative responses to stress have remained largely unknown. Our previous research suggests that oxytocin and endogenous opioid peptides are implicated in these responses, especially in women.

This isn't some journalist mangling Shelly Taylor's words. This isn't even some other researcher mangling Shelly Taylor's words. These are Shelly Taylor's words, from http://taylorlab.psych.ucla.edu/research.htm.

 

Need more? From SE Taylor, LC Klein, BP Lewis, TL Gruenewald, "Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight" Pyschological Review, 2000, http://bbh.hhdev.psu.edu/labs/bbhsl/PDF%20files/taylor%20et%20al.%202000.pdf

Survival depends on the ability to mount a successful response to threat. The human stress response has been characterized as fight-or-flight (Cannon, 1932) and has been represented as an essential mechanism in the survival process. We propose that human female responses to stress (as well as those of some animal species) are not well characterized by fight-or-flight, as research has implicitly assumed, but rather are more typically characterized by a pattern we term "tend-and-befriend." Specifically, we suggest that, by virtue of differential parental investment, female stress responses have selectively evolved to maximize the survival of self and offspring. We suggest that females respond to stress by nurturing offspring, exhibiting behaviors that protect them from harm and reduce neuroendocrine responses that may compromise offspring health (the tending pattern), and by befriending, namely, affiliating with social groups to reduce risk. We hypothesize and consider evidence from humans and other species to suggest that females create, maintain, and utilize these social groups, especially relations with other females, to manage stressful conditions. We suggest that female responses to stress may build on attachment-caregiving processes that downregulate sympathetic and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) responses to stress. In support of this biobehavioral theory, we consider a large animal and human literature on neuroendocrine responses to stress, suggesting that the tend-and-befriend pattern may be oxytocin mediated and moderated by sex hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms.

 

=================================

 

This is politically motivated pseudoscience, pure and simple. Find a study that suggests males are better than females in any way intellectually (e.g., the highest scoring males outscore the highest scoring females in math) and you will find article after article that attack that study as being biased, or just plain wrong. Continue to state that males (top males, not average) are better than females (top females, not average) at math and you may, as Larry Summers found out. lose your job.

 

On the other hand, if you state the females, on average and in aggregate, are much better at leading everything from households to nations to the world, (a statement with much broader impact than being a better mathematician) and the politically correct audience will sing your praises.

Edited February 14, 2009 by D H

[ParanoiA]

What in the world are you talking about? Males better than females? Where did that come from? I didn't read anything that attempted to assign primacy to one or the other, let alone to the sexes. If that's the point of that publication, then yeah, that sounds like a perversion for sure.

 

I took the abstract at face value, and please correct me if I shouldn't, that it was about a Tend-and-Befriend pattern of behavior associated with females due to physiological differences associated with oxytocin and estrogen, within the context of fight-or-flight stressors. I certainly don't see anything inferior about that, do you?

 

Also, I never said I supported Taylor's conclusions anyway, only that it supports the background the author of this email did misrepresent and use for his political point. He said it was proven, it was not. I don't have the credibility to determine what scientific publication is legitimate and what is not, I rely on you guys for that sort of thing.

 

In my first post I stated I had always wondered something similar, and that it was personal observation and not a belief, nor anything I would attempt to posit. Hope that didn't get misinterpreted.

Edited February 14, 2009 by ParanoiA

[D H]

What in the world are you talking about? Males better than females? Where did that come from?

The other way around, ParanoiA. Females are better than males. This is exactly the crap that the social scientists (Taylor et al) and even more so those who exaggerate/extrapolate from her writings claim: If women had been leading the banking institutions our country wouldn't be in the mess it is in now.

 

Which is of course a pile of hogwash.

[ParanoiA]

The other way around, ParanoiA. Females are better than males. This is exactly the crap that the social scientists (Taylor et al) and even more so those who exaggerate/extrapolate from her writings claim: If women had been leading the banking institutions our country wouldn't be in the mess it is in now.

 

Which is of course a pile of hogwash.

 

Well yeah it's a pile of hogwash to make that political point, or even the philosophical point of females being better than males.

 

But what does that have to do with Taylor's research? Does she, and the other writers, attempt to make that case in "Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight"? (That's actually the paper I took the abstract from, above. I didn't have access to it without paying for it).

[visceral]

This is politically motivated pseudoscience, pure and simple

 

Yeah that was what I thought too.

 

I'm only an ignorant 18 year old, but I would have thought that all people, male or female, would help each other out/take action as a group (a.k.a tend and befriend) to alleviate a stressful situation. I don't think it takes high estrogen levels to do that.

 

Also, I think she's talking shit when she says that fleeing or fighting is not productive when you have children with you. If you're faced with an enemy, you don't sit and maintain your social relationships, you fight said enemy or you grab your child and run.

[ParanoiA]

So you are of the opinion that, generally speaking, females are every bit as likely to react aggressively in a fight-or-flight situation as males?

 

See, I'm not any more sure about that than I am tend-and-befriend. People are going to react differently to the same stessor. It's hard to believe that no pattern could be found along gender lines. And I'm not sure why that's charged with fears of devaluation.

[visceral]

So you are of the opinion that, generally speaking, females are every bit as likely to react aggressively in a fight-or-flight situation as males?

 

See, I'm not any more sure about that than I am tend-and-befriend. People are going to react differently to the same stessor. It's hard to believe that no pattern could be found along gender lines. And I'm not sure why that's charged with fears of devaluation.

 

Yes I do. I could be wrong, though.

 

Like you said, people react differently to a different stressor. I'd imagine that you get a continuum in both sexes, ranging from the very phlegmatic people to the ones with a hair-trigger SNS.

[D H]

But what does that have to do with Taylor's research? Does she, and the other writers, attempt to make that case in "Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, Not Fight-or-Flight"? (That's actually the paper I took the abstract from, above. I didn't have access to it without paying for it).

Read Shelly Taylor's own website. Read the paper that started this whole imbroglio. The links are right there in post #16. Quoting from her UCLA website, "This tend-and-befriend account of social responses to stress is the theoretical basis for our work. ... Our previous research suggests that oxytocin and endogenous opioid peptides are implicated in these responses, especially in women." Quoting from the 2000 paper, "We propose that human female responses to stress are not well characterized by fight-or-flight, as research has implicitly assumed, but rather are more typically characterized by a pattern we term 'tend-and-befriend.'"

 

So you are of the opinion that, generally speaking, females are every bit as likely to react aggressively in a fight-or-flight situation as males?

I am of the opinion "Vive la Différence." Men and women are a bit different, mentally and physically. Thank god for that. Usually. Exception granted for those occasions when my wife remembers one of my transgressions from 25 years ago.

[ParanoiA]

Read Shelly Taylor's own website. Read the paper that started this whole imbroglio. The links are right there in post #16. Quoting from her UCLA website, "This tend-and-befriend account of social responses to stress is the theoretical basis for our work. ... Our previous research suggests that oxytocin and endogenous opioid peptides are implicated in these responses, especially in women." Quoting from the 2000 paper, "We propose that human female responses to stress are not well characterized by fight-or-flight, as research has implicitly assumed, but rather are more typically characterized by a pattern we term 'tend-and-befriend.'

 

That's the exact same quote I posted in my post # 9. I didn't ask if Taylor is positing a Tend-and-Befriend pattern of behavior, I'm asking if Taylor is making the case that women are better than men.

 

We must separate the author of this email in the OP from Taylor. We know the author is misusing Taylor's results to score political points. But is Taylor doing that as well? I don't know, I'm asking. From what I've read, she isn't, but rather we are jumping to conclusions and frying her along with this mysterious author.

 

So, is Taylor trying to say that women are better than men? And perhaps a better question might be, is Taylor's paper hogwash, or is it legitimate?

[visceral]

I am find it hard to believe that as a general group women react to stress by being social and looking after each other.

 

Purely anecdotally, when most women I know are stressed, they tend to get pissed off at each other more easily, same as men.

 

They may have more of a tendency to use long term solutions and act as a unit, but I would not go so far as to accept that fight or flight = male, tend and befriend = female.