News articles with a negative tone, and which describe stressful situations, when read by women can increase women’s sensitivity but do not affect men in the same way.
Sophia Lupien, Director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress at the Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital, described the approach of the study, in saying, “When our brain perceives a threatening situation, our bodies begin to produce stress hormones that enter the brain and may modulate memories of stressful or negative events. This led us to believe that reading a negative news story should provoke the reader’s stress reaction.”
In the study conducted by researchers from the University of Montreal, 60 people were given actual news stories while being divided into gender segregated groups of four. Also, in order to determine stress levels, samples of saliva were analyzed to check for the hormone, cortisol, which is released when a person is stressed.
Two groups, consisting of both men and women separately, were given neutral news stories related to the opening of a park or a new movie while the other two groups were asked to read news stories that described accidents or crime.
After this, all participants underwent a series of standardized tests that evaluated one’s memory and intellect to find out how people respond to stress. The results of the samples and the standardized tests showed that these news stories increased a woman’s susceptibility to be reactive to later stressful situations.
Also, in comparing the groups of women who read the both types of stories, it was determined that cortisol levels were higher in the group that read negative news as opposed to those who read neutral news stories.
Remarkably, it was found that while women remembered more details of the negative stories, the men were not able to do so.