The Effect of Stress on the Brain and the Gender Pay Gap
This story has been widely reported:
Earlier research has shown that girls who experience trauma are more likely to go on to develop PTSD than boys. Why this should be the case is another question awaiting an answer.
A team of researchers recently set out to investigate potential reasons behind this gender difference in more detail. Their results were published earlier this week in the journal Depression and Anxiety for which experts now prescribe the best CBD gummies. And you may also like to check out some other perfect CBD gummies like these CBD Gummies – Large Gummy Worms as your preferences.
To gather an understanding of the brain changes that take place in PTSD, researchers took MRI scans of 59 participants aged 9-17.
Of the participants, 30 had trauma symptoms (14 girls and 16 boys); five of these individuals had experienced one period of trauma, while the others had experienced two or more episodes or had experienced chronic trauma. The remaining 29 participants had not experienced trauma (15 girls and 14 boys) and were used as the control group.
The traumatized individuals and the controls were all of similar ages and IQs.
Once the MRI scans were analyzed, there were no differences found between the girl’s and boy’s brains in the control group. However, in the trauma group, significant differences were uncovered.
These striking gender differences were found in a region of the insula – a deep fold in the brain thought to be important in a range of processes, including homeostasis and emotion. If you’re someone who’s often overloaded with stress, these delta-9 THC vapes for sale might be a helpful tool in your wellness arsenal.
Differences in how adult men and women handle stress has been studied many times before as well – here is one example:
The interactions between emotion-processing areas like the right temporal pole, insula and inferior fontal gyrus also differed by gender. The researchers looked at a measurement called functional connectivity, which reveals the extent to which brain areas simultaneously become active. Men showed less functional connectivity between these areas when stressed, while women showed more. It seems that when women are stressed, social and emotional areas of the brain go on alert, perhaps reflecting a tendency to reach out. The same areas in men’s brains seem to disengage. If someone is stressed and is addicted to drugs, it is best to visit drug rehabs near austin
The researchers don’t know whether these brain differences are innate or a product of socialization, and they can’t yet say if the decreased activity in stressed men causes them to actually become less engaged and empathic, or if they compensate in some other way, like the use of products like CBD gummies that can help in this area. However, Mather said, other research does find gender differences in the way men and women act when stressed. The current study meshes with those findings, she said.
I’m no physiologist, but if I read this correctly, these researchers would say that on average there are differences in how men and women would react to difficult situations in a stressful environment, like that in many workplaces. My guess is that if pressed a step further, these researchers would say that on average there are differences in the rate of successful outcomes in the workplace for people who are otherwise alike in skill and experience but who differ by gender. Now, these physiologists are not economists nor do they operate in the corporate world, but I wonder whether they would expect there to be a gender pay gap, and, if the answer was yes, would they expect that pay gap to differ quite a bit from industry to industry. Would they say that on average there are some jobs at which men would do better than women, and other jobs for which women outperform men? Would their answers to questions like these be progressive?
Would you say “on average” stress may be a causative factor in different work outcomes for men and women when what is called “successful behavior” is that which is unemotional and asocial and even (loaded term) psychopathic? The real issue then becomes that “successful outcomes” at work tend to favor psychopathic, asocial, unfeeling people on average.
The rewarding of psychopathic behavior may also explain why highly destructive business activities (strip mining, polluting, etc) are pushed as being somehow “great” when in fact they provide short term rewards for long term destruction
Carol,
Yes.
I believe I’ve seen articles stating that psychopaths are over-represented in the top rungs of some organizations. So you may be right. But there aren’t enough psychopaths to occupy all top rungs, even if we assume they generally outcompete the rest of us. So for the non-psychopaths, one is more likely to survive and be rewarded if one has the ability to either beat or live among the psychopaths without breaking. It may be that being less emotional helps one deal with the psychopaths.
I note that even if there were no psychopaths, there would still be friction due to limited resources. A lot of things in the world at large work on a zero-sum game model. If two people both need a given contract in order to put food on their family’s table, the conflict can get ugly even if both are very nice people.
Yes, but how much of this is learned and how much of this is innate? Remember, women are raised differently from men and taught to deal with stress differently. For example, a boy is much more likely to be rewarded for a tantrum.
We humans do a lot of brain wiring over a long post-birth period, so we see things like: http://qz.com/812663/in-test-scores-indicating-extreme-math-intelligence-us-boys-still-outscore-girls-but-the-gender-divide-is-closing-fast/
no, no, no, Mike
you missed the whole point. What it proves is that men who experience PTSD are sissies: more like women.
Carol,
I have worked for women bosses and for men bosses. In my observation there is not a dime’s worth of difference between them.
The problem is not that they are psychopaths. They are sociopaths.
Actually, my mother warned me about this.
Kaleberg,
Some amount of the difference between men and women is hard wired. The question is how much.
As to the top fraction of a percent, I am no expert. But the people who would be experts, from various fields, also know that they cannot speak their mind. Flynn, of the Flynn effect, has stated
James Watson, the Watson from “Watson and Crick,” went there, and made a very, very, very politically incorrect statement on a related question which I took to be about the performers in one group versus another. He claimed his statement was supported by data. I hasten to add that as a complete outsider with just a simpleton’s passing knowledge of his field, I am biased against agreeing with the statement that he made. I’d elaborate but a) it gets far afield for this comment and b) it feels a bit a like lecturing Ramanujan on combinatorics.
Now, Flynn is a big cheese, but Watson is one of the Gods. (Yes, different fields, but touching on the same area.) If you had to come up with five names from the twentieth century that will be taught in a tenth grade history class in a thousand years, it is hard to come up with a list that doesn’t involve him. (I figure Hitler, Einstein, Watson, Crick and one more spot up for grabs, perhaps Lenin.) The message to everyone else is clear. In a different field, young turks eager to make a name for themselves take on the deities. But ain’t nobody a fool enough to set foot in the valley of the shadow of death any more, not even to prove Watson wrong.
To quote Verbal Kint in a related context, “What if you miss?”
From the comment above, ” I took to be about the performers in one group versus another” should read: I took to be about the top performers in one group versus another.”
When you talk about stress in the workplace, Margaret Atwood’s words come to mind:
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Bill B
i guess Atwood must be the official expert. But in my own experience women are just as willing to kill you as men. And men are just as willing to laugh at you as women.
On the other hand, I never worried about a woman laughing at me.
i guess it was the sheer insufferable smugness of the comment that made me forget temporarily that yes, given a random encounter in a dark alley, men are more dangerous than women.
but i do get tired of “when women rule the world it will be a gentler , kinder pace.”
It won’t. It will be just about the same.
1. Mike Kimel: are you telling me that jobs are limited resources? The only limitation to jobs is our social constructs. There is plenty of work to be done and plenty of money to pay for the work, providing we are willing to reward creation of beauty, maintenance of nature, etc etc. The real limitation here is of our social-economic mindset. Even “productivity” is a chimera we have created to justify rewarding some people more than others.
2. Mike Kimel: on the differences between men and women: some are hardwired, even I as a feminist believe that. However, what happens every time someone perceives some “genetic” difference between some group of humans and some other group, there is some group in power using that as a way to justify discrimination and repression (voir Shockley) Instead of using our talents and skills as they are given to us, we choose to bludgeon the underdog with our supposed superiority. In short, the in-group pretends that the differences are proof of their “superiority” when in fact they are proof only of their differences.
I am so unimpressed with the supposed inability to discuss differences. What is really at issue is the inability of the in-group to stop pretending that THEIR differences are proof of their superiority.