Study on Friendship Among Women
UCLA Study On Friendship Among Women: An alternative to fight or flight
by Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They
shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner
world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we
really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that
hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of
stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark
UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain
chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.
It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---
most of it on men---upside down.
Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when
people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the
body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura
Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at
Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient
survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet
by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire
than just fight or flight. In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the
hormone oxytocin is release as part of the stress responses in a woman, it
buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children
and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this
tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released,
which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming
response does not occur in men, says Dr.Klein, because testosterone---which
men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the
effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in
a classic "aha" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one
day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in
the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and
bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere
on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that
nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from
my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist
after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein
and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research,
scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress
differently than men has significant implications for our health. It may
take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin
encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the
"tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain
why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social
ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and
cholesterol. There's no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us
live longer.
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends
increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study,
those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death
by more than 60%.
Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study
fromHarvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less
likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more
likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so
significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or
confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra
weight.
And that's not all. When the researchers looked at how well the women
functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the
face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend
and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new
physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends
were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems
to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and
even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them?
That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen
Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of
Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). The following
paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all women should
be aware of and NOT put our female friends on the back burners.
Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do
is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push
them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are
such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we
need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk
that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing
experience.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L, Gurung, R.
A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend,
Not Fight or Flight" Psychol Rev, 107(3):41-429.
ary DC, Flinn MV. Sex differences in behavioral and hormonal response to
social threat: commentary on Taylor et al. Psychol Rev 2002
Oct;109(4):745-50; discussion 751-3
Cousino Klein L, Corwin EJ. Seeing the unexpected: how sex differences in
stress responses may provide a new perspective on the manifestation of
psychiatric disorders.
Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2002 Dec;4(6):441-8.
by Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They
shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner
world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we
really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that
hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of
stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark
UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain
chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.
It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---
most of it on men---upside down.
Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when
people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the
body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura
Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at
Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient
survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet
by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire
than just fight or flight. In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the
hormone oxytocin is release as part of the stress responses in a woman, it
buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children
and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this
tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released,
which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming
response does not occur in men, says Dr.Klein, because testosterone---which
men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the
effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in
a classic "aha" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one
day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in
the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and
bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere
on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that
nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from
my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist
after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein
and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research,
scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress
differently than men has significant implications for our health. It may
take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin
encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the
"tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain
why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social
ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and
cholesterol. There's no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us
live longer.
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends
increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study,
those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death
by more than 60%.
Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study
fromHarvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less
likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more
likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so
significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or
confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra
weight.
And that's not all. When the researchers looked at how well the women
functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the
face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend
and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new
physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends
were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems
to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and
even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them?
That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen
Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of
Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). The following
paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all women should
be aware of and NOT put our female friends on the back burners.
Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do
is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push
them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are
such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we
need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk
that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing
experience.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L, Gurung, R.
A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend,
Not Fight or Flight" Psychol Rev, 107(3):41-429.
ary DC, Flinn MV. Sex differences in behavioral and hormonal response to
social threat: commentary on Taylor et al. Psychol Rev 2002
Oct;109(4):745-50; discussion 751-3
Cousino Klein L, Corwin EJ. Seeing the unexpected: how sex differences in
stress responses may provide a new perspective on the manifestation of
psychiatric disorders.
Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2002 Dec;4(6):441-8.