Stressed Men Less Empathic

Stressed men looking at angry faces have diminished activity in the brain regions responsible for understanding others’ feelings.

Stressed men looking at angry faces have diminished activity in the brain regions responsible for understanding others’ feelings. Turns out that the oh-so-familiar silent and stoic response to stress might be a guy thing after all.

In an article in the journal NeuroReport, Mara Mather and her co-authors present a series of tests indicating that under acute stress, men had less brain response to facial expressions, in particular fear and anger. In both men and women, looking at pictures of faces caused activity in a part of the brain used in basic visual processing (the ‘fusiform face area’) and in parts of the brain used for interpreting and understanding facial expressions. 

However, men under acute stress showed decreased activity not only in the fusiform face area, but also decreased coordination among parts of the brain that help us interpret what emotions these faces are conveying. In a marked gender difference, women displayed increased coordination among the brain regions used in interpreting facial emotions.