[study on male/female empathic responses under stress](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140317095927.htm)

MissPearl · 2014-03-18T15:06:09+00:00

Well, from birth, girls are given more face-to-face social interactions, while male infants are exposed to more risk via rougher handling and perception of more crawling competence. As they age, there seems to be more tolerance for girls expressing emotions of some kinds (like tears) over others (like aggressive anger).

Personally I don't think men are less inherently capable of empathy. Certainly competence what I'd define as a high empathy task set (childcare) appears to be tied to how much experience a person has had looking after kids, not the contents of their trousers.

roe_ · 2014-03-18T19:49:30+00:00

And if so, in what ways might we be able to close the "empathy gap" here between girls and boys?

Make the men in your life (especially your sons) know that they are intrinsically worthy of love. I know it sounds saccharine, but men resist showing vulnerability because they are afraid of losing out on love.

Funny story - I was watching Mulan this past weekend with my daughters. My oldest is 6 & is high-functioning autistic. At the part where Mulan's father is about to get conscripted into the army despite having a bad leg, just after he tells his daughter - "I know my place, you must learn yours" I asked her what she thought Mulan's father was feeling. She said "scared." Like I said, she's autistic, so not so empathic - I think this is a case where not being sensitive to facial expressions helped her with gleaning information from context.

There's lessons there. I think one is that we also train our daughters to be less empathic towards men, and men less empathic towards themselves.

SirNemesis · 2014-03-18T18:51:30+00:00

Think about it in evolutionary terms.

There is a tribe that gets attacked by a big scary monster. Everyone gets stressed out. The men, who're naturally stronger, focus on killing the monster. The women focus on keeping the children safe and getting the men to fight the monster.

Empathy during stressful times has its pros and cons. Men can fight their way out of sticky situations (because their brain power isn't being wasted on empathy), while women can talk their way out of sticky situations (because their brain power isn't being wasted on fighting).

radonthrowaway · 2014-03-18T15:17:22+00:00

Here is a link to full-text.

The experiment can't measure whether the difference is biological or cultural. If that's mentioned as "conclusion" somewhere then that's purely ideological, not scientific.

What the experiment found (see figure 3 b) is that women without stress were equally as egocentric as men with stress.

Equally! If men's empathy levels under stress are bad, then women without stress are also horribly un-empathetic.

But on the other side, the experiment suggests that women are far more emphatic under stress: If women were under stress they became significantly less egocentric than even men who weren't under stress.

If the experiment can be extrapolated to real life, the lesson would be: if you need a woman to have empathy, put her under stress.

roe_ · 2014-03-18T18:59:20+00:00

The individual can cope with stress in one of two ways: by trying to reduce the internal load of "extra" resources being used, or, more simply, by seeking external support.

It's a bit weird to not consider this and the results of the study in light of physical dimorphism - of course (it seems to me) the physically weaker gender is going to focus efforts on acquiring help, while the stronger focuses on martialing internal resources.

To leave the bounds of the study - are boys socially pressured to be more stoic? Of course! Even in modernity, men are more often put in situations that demand suppression of their emotions - including violence, negotiating, approaching a woman for a date, disciplining children, playing poker, working at a job they dislike...

DevilishRogue · 2014-03-18T20:59:52+00:00

I remember reading somewhere that women tended to score differently on SDI's to men. This just seems to further support that.

rulenumber303 · 2014-03-19T07:35:33+00:00

Nah, it is estrogen.

I wouldn't be the least surprised if post menopausal women show a more similar response to men. One of the reasons marriages tend to break up when women hit their forties is they are less inclined to empathy when stressed by a grumpy spouse than they were before the hormones changed.

Less of

"what's wrong why are you shouting what can i do to help oh dear what happened to the paint can let me go run to get a cloth and clean it up for you they really need to make those paint can handles stronger"

and more of

"please don't yell at me angrily unless it is actually me you are angry at, the cleaning rags are under the sink I'll go bring you some"

Can be a hell of a shock for a guy who got used to relying on this particular female quirk to get his wife running round after him and applying salve to his ego whenever he felt the slightest bit stressed.

BabeOfBlasphemy · 2014-03-19T18:57:17+00:00

Studies show women Show greater brain activity in response to a babies cry (we also have physiological reactions such as breast let down). So it is possible but I know of no other studies.

sh1v · 2014-03-19T01:24:29+00:00

Specifically, do you agree with the conclusion that women's higher empathic response to stress is a psychosocial development (I.e., a learned response from society)? And if so, in what ways might we be able to close the "empathy gap" here between girls and boys?

Personally I agree with the conclusion that it's a response taught and reinforced by society (feel free to try and change my mind),

That's a strong formulation of a conclusion that contained "may have" and "might be" and presented an alternate biological explanation you neglected to mention (varying levels of oxytocin in women and men).

As for closing the "empathy gap", I think it'd be useful to look at ways we can lower women's excess empathy. Perhaps doing so would ameliorate some of the more troubling tendencies I've seen among women, such as taking things personally, placing undue emphasis on feelings (notably feelings related to oppression), falling back upon irrational, emotionally charged arguments in any conflict, promoting misguided social policy in order to impose equal circumstances rather than rewarding individual effort, and so on. Then again, perhaps it's merely the confluence of empathy and other traits -- solipsism, say -- that is to blame for these effects.

Overall, I'm wary of any attempt to formulate or implement policy on the basis of a single sociological study. Making the leap from "this study shows X" to "therefore, we should achieve Y" requires the acceptance of some implicit assumptions which your audience may not share. Is more empathy always good? Is it better for women and men to have similar levels of empathy, rather than different? Why not go the opposite route and specialize further? You have leaped straight to the conclusion that the empathy gap is a problem that should be solved through some form of social engineering, without really pausing to make your case. And I'd like to point out that there are not, nor can there be, any studies you can use to make those arguments for you.

Title	[study on male/female empathic responses under stress](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140317095927.htm)
Author	iloveutacos
Upvotes	11
Comments	35
Date	March 18, 2014 2:51 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/20pz95/study_on_malefemale_empathic_responses_under/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/study-on-malefemale-empathic-responses-under.286060 https://theredarchive.com/post/286060

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