Social support from women appears to be more effective than support from men in reducing both men’s and women’s blood pressure under stress. But, scientists who ran the laboratory experiments that discovered this don’t know why it is so.
The results are clear, however: both men and women subjects who were asked to make an impromptu five-minute speech as a stress test had larger blood pressure increases from the stress when male listeners gave positive feedback than when female listeners did.
“If you accept the idea that reducing the magnitude of blood pressure responses to stress can have a protective effect on the cardiovascular system, the people with friends — especially female friends — should suffer less heart disease,” says Laura M. Glynn, PhD, now at the University of California at Irvine, lead author of the research report published in Psychosomatic Medicine.
Her research team examined 109 University of California-San Diego university undergraduates with normal resting blood pressure using nine confederates who were scripted and trained to behave supportively or non-supportively on command.
When a woman listener in the support role provided sympathetic nods, smiled and laughed, and murmured “good point” now and then during the speech, the speakers showed a modest systolic blood pressure increase averaging 25 mm Hg. over baseline.
When men in the support role provided the same kind of feedback, the average increase was not 32 mm, more than 25 percent higher. And when the men listeners were in a non-supportive rather than a supportive role, the speakers’ blood pressure increased less, only 28 mm over baseline.
In the non-supportive role, listeners offered no positive feedback. Their facial expressions were neutral, and their demeanor was generally inattentive. They slouched in their chairs with arms crossed and did not respond in any way if the speaker smiled or laughed.
The researchers acknowledge that their data do not indicate why support from women is more effective than support from men in reducing cardiovascular responses. However, they say their findings suggest a mechanism that may help explain earlier research on the relationship between gender, social support, and health.
For example, they point out that their findings are consistent with the notion that married men are healthier than single men: it’s because they marry women. And why women do not profit as much from marriage or suffer as much from its breakup in terms of health outcomes is because the support they gain or lose is the less effective support of men.
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