研究表明，男性会在压力下会变得更加以自我为中心，他们会很容易把情绪发泄到周围人身上。而女性面对压力，则会变得更加愿意“亲近社会”。
实验参与者被施加了“适度的”压力，比如进行公开演讲或者当面解答数学问题。他们被要求模仿某些动作，或者来描述自己和他人的情绪，或者从他人的视角来判断问题。
研究人员观察到，在这三种情况下，压力都会让男性的表现更糟糕，而女性则相反。
研究人员指出，从心理学角度来说，女性能够和别人进行更好的沟通的时候，就会得到更多的外部支持，她们还会吸收这种经验，为自己所用。
从生理方面来看，这种差异是由于和社会行为相关的催产素引起的。某些研究表明，在充满压力的情况下，女性会比男性产生更多的催产素。
Everyone gets stressed out, but new research suggests that men and women cope with these situations in different ways.
According to the study, men become more egocentric and self-centered when stressed. They have trouble separating their own intentions and emotions from those of the people around them.
On the other hand, women who are under a lot of stress may become “prosocial.”
“There's a subtle boundary between the ability to identify with others and take on their perspective — and therefore be empathic — and the inability to distinguish between self and other, thus acting egocentrically,” study author Dr. Giorgia Silani explained in a release. “To be truly empathic and behave prosocially it's important to maintain the ability to distinguish between self and other, and stress appears to play an important role in this.”
The study participants were asked to do “moderately” stressful things, like speak in public or answer math problems in their heads. They were then asked to imitate certain movements, identify their own emotions or those of others, and judge something from another person’s perspective.
“What we observed was that stress worsens the performance of men in all three types of tasks. The opposite is true for women,” Silani said.
The researchers said their original hypothesis was that stress would make people more self-centered across the board, so they were partly correct.
They also said they aren’t sure why this is the case.
"At a psychosocial level, women may have internalized the experience that they receive more external support when they are able to interact better with others," Silani said.
On a physiological level, the discrepancy could be caused by oxytocin, the hormone connected with social behaviors, she added. Other studies have shown that women produce more oxytocin in stressful situations than men do.
The international study was led by Silani, who is from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, in cooperation with researchers from the University of Freiburg in Germany and the University of Vienna.
The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.