How Cortisol Reactivity Influences Prosocial Decision-Making: The Moderating Role of Sex and Empathic Concern.

Qionghan Zhang,Jianhong Ma,Urs M Nater

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00415

Abstract

The fight and flight theory and the tend-and-befriend theory suggest two opposite behavioral stress responses, and heterogeneous research results revealed the importance of taking sex into account. The experiment was designed to investigate the effect of stress-related cortisol reactivity on subsequent prosocial decision-making behaviors, and the moderating role of sex and empathic concern (EC) in the process. Sixty-one healthy students (34 women, 27 men) underwent the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) or the control condition. Subsequently, participants completed three economic tasks—the dictator game, the ultimatum game, and the third-party compensation game. Statistical analyses revealed a significant main effect of cortisol reactivity on individuals’ third-party compensation behaviorssex. A sex-specific effect of stress-related cortisol change on prosocial behaviors was found, with men behaving more generously in the dictator game as stress-related cortisol reactivity increased. Furthermore, the level of EC was found to moderate the association between stress-related cortisol change and prosocial behaviors, that individuals with a low level of EC reported more generosity and third-party compensation behaviors. Overall, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the behavioral stress responses, that individuals whose hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are highly activated in response to stress would exhibit tend-and-befriend responses, but only among men and those with a low level of EC.

Highlights

When faced with a stressful situation, the human body will adjust itself to maintain stability, which is defined as allostasis (McEwen, 1998)
The second aim was to examine the moderating role of empathic concern (EC) in the association between the stress-induced cortisol and prosocial decision-making behaviors immediately after stress, and we hypothesized that stress and stress-related cortisol elevation were more predictive on decision-making behavior at a low level of EC rather than on the high level of EC
We found that men in the stress group showed more 3PC behaviors compared in the control group, and the magnitude of cortisol secretion successfully predicted men’s generosity and 3PC behaviors

Summary

Introduction

When faced with a stressful situation, the human body will adjust itself to maintain stability, which is defined as allostasis (McEwen, 1998). While accumulating evidence have supported the tend-and-befriend theory among women (Tomova et al, 2014; von Dawans et al, 2019), Geary and Flinn (2002) argued that the nature of parental investment rooted in both genders, and befriending could be a consequence of men’s fight-or-flight response to stress Some studies supported their perspective that tend-and-befriend theory is not exclusive to women, and stressed men exhibited prosocial or affiliative behaviors (Youssef et al, 2012; von Dawans et al, 2012; Margittai et al, 2015; Berger et al, 2016). An alternative theory suggested that it is a universal pattern that individuals engage in prosocial behaviors to mitigate the negative effects due to stress and maintain the mental health (Aknin et al, 2013; Raposa et al, 2016)

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