Gender Differences in Response to Emotional Stress: An Assessment Across Subjective, Behavioral, and Physiological Domains and Relations to Alcohol Craving

Abstract

Women and men are at risk for different types of stress-related disorders, with women at greater risk for depression and anxiety and men at greater risk for alcohol-use disorders. The present study examines gender differences in emotional and alcohol craving responses to stress that may relate to this gender divergence in disorders. Healthy adult social drinkers (27 men, 27 women) were exposed to individually developed and calibrated stressful, alcohol-related, and neutral-relaxing imagery, 1 imagery per session, on separate days and in random order. Subjective emotions, behavioral/bodily responses, cardiovascular arousal [heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP)], and self-reported alcohol craving were assessed. Women reported and displayed greater sadness and anxiety following stress than men and men had greater diastolic BP response than women. No gender differences in alcohol craving, systolic BP or HR were observed. Subjective, behavioral, and cardiovascular measures were correlated in both genders. However, for men, but not women, alcohol craving was associated with greater subjective emotion and behavioral arousal following stress and alcohol cues. These data suggest that men and women respond to stress differently, with women experiencing greater sadness and anxiety, while men show a greater integration of reward motivation (craving) and emotional stress systems. These findings have implications for the gender-related divergence in vulnerability for stress-related disorders, with women at greater risk for anxiety and depression than men, and men at greater risk for alcohol-use disorders than women.