Search Here

We all pick up the newspaper in the morning to know what is going around the world. While men usually simply shrug their shoulders to painful headlines, the same headline can reduce a woman to tears. One could conclude that it is simply because women are more sensitive and emotional. But a new study suggests, that bad news affect women more than men because women have evolved to be more empathetic and protective toward their children.

The study found that apart from being affected by reports of accidents and murders, women also tend to remember more details of the situation explained in the news story, Mail Online reported.

For the study, Canadian researchers recruited 56 men and women and gave them a selection of stories from Montreal's newspapers. While some stories were judged to be emotionally neutral, such as a report about a film premiere, others were more disturbing.

The researchers took samples of saliva regularly from the participants during the experiment in order to check for any increase in the levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

"Although the news stories alone did not increase stress levels they did make the women more reactive, affecting their physiological response to later stressful situations. Moreover, the women were able to remember more details of the negative stories. It is interesting to note that we did not observe this phenomenon among the male participants," University of Montreal researcher Marie-France Marin was quoted as saying by Mail Online.

She added that it could be because women's bodies are prepared to be alert to danger.

"It has been suggested that women's stress system is wired up to ensure not only their own survival but the one of their offspring as well," she said.

Professor Terrie Moffitt, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said that figuring out how women cope with extra stress could be key to good health.

"How do women manage to neutralize the effects of stress on their cardiovascular systems? An answer to that would improve the health of all of us," she said.

The article was published in the journal PLOS ONE.