Men more prone to risk under stress than women: Study
Men under stress are more likely to take risks while women were more risk-averse under stress, a new study says.
The research, which was published in the latest journal PLoS One, showed that when men were under stress they were more likely to take risks, correlating to such real-life behaviour as gambling, smoking, unsafe sex and illegal drug use. In contrast, stressed women moderate their behaviour and may be less likely to make risky choices, the study found.
“Evolutionarily speaking, it’s perhaps more beneficial for men to be aggressive in stressful, high-arousal situations when risk and reward are involved,” said Ms Nichole Lighthall, the lead author of the paper.
“Men seem to enter more risky financial situations than women, which was part of the impetus for our study,” Lighthall of the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology, was quoted as saying in a release.
It was “only in the stressed condition” that the researchers found “any statistical differences in risky behaviour between men and women.”