Comments on: Stress: Women need cuddles, men need kudos

Stress: Women need cuddles, men need kudos

johoney — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:55:54 -0800

Stress-fi: Women need cuddles, men need kudos

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:57:57 -0800

The one on the right, that is the man, no?

By: carsonb

carsonb — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:05:48 -0800

"We all need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth." - Virginia Satir

By: saguaro

saguaro — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:07:32 -0800

HUGS FOR EVERYONE!

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:08:32 -0800

"We all need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth." - Virginia Satir I was gonna be all "A-men to that!" until I realized it didn't say "mugs" after all.

By: Firas

Firas — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:12:11 -0800

Yes, but the true Adonises among us will tell you sweet things and cuddle you. /sucks in tummy

By: konolia

konolia — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:14:59 -0800

My husband is way more into hugs when he is stressed. I normally don't like to be TOUCHED when I'm stressed out. Fun times. He likes chick flicks too, if it matters.

By: amyms

amyms — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:18:27 -0800

*hugs all the girls* *tells all the boys that they're brave and strong*

By: imperium

imperium — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:24:13 -0800

Isn't this kind of research more usually found in the Daily Mail's Femail section? I hear. Come on: the study was based on 67 women. And only their partners by extension. Sorry to snark, but flagged as super-thin content. Even if the journal has the longest single-word title of any mag I've ever seen.

By: ysabet

ysabet — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:58:30 -0800

Acutally ... I thrive more on verbal reassurance than I do on hugs, and my husband is the opposite. Then again, we exchange about 30 emails a day saying 'I love you' and spend quite a lot of time hugging when we're together, so I don't know how good a sample we are...

By: konolia

konolia — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:58:51 -0800

Okay, the hubs just came home from work. I asked him about whether he preferred hugs or kudos for stress. He said, and I quote: "I need SEX!" (quoted WITH permission.)

By: steef

steef — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:23:36 -0800

I am brave, and strong! (Tell me again, while you hold me?)

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:31:44 -0800

Yeah, to heck with kudos, men need blowjobs.

By: crinklebat

crinklebat — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:33:22 -0800

ysabet, me too. I need praise so much more than my boyfriend does, and he needs physical contact vastly more than I do.

By: lekvar

lekvar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:35:15 -0800

Ianybody who tries to hug me while I'm stressed had better be brave and strong.

By: arialblack

arialblack — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:43:25 -0800

Huuugs!

By: epugachev

epugachev — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:49:42 -0800

I think men need Kudos.

By: Mr.Encyclopedia

Mr.Encyclopedia — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:56:11 -0800

Women requiring hugs please form an orderly line to my right.

By: Arturus

Arturus — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:05:43 -0800

We may have instinctively guessed as much, but now we have some scientific proof. Here's the problem with this sort of research: everyone always takes it as reinforcing their predetermined stereotypes. What you really want to look at, and what they're not telling you in this blurb, is what the in-group variation is versus the cross-group variation. I'm willing to bet you the former is greater than the latter, meaning that really, the outcome is "women are slightly more likely to respond better to physical contact than to verbal reassurance". People don't want weak results like these, they want to reinforce their gender essentialist views, facts be damned.

By: epugachev

epugachev — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:04:58 -0800

I'm willing to bet you the former is greater than the latter, meaning that really, the outcome is "women are slightly more likely to respond better to physical contact than to verbal reassurance". For your classical statistical tests, within group variation being greater than between group variation would mean the results were not statistically significant. This would mean that the study would not have been published. But yeah, you should always pay attention to effect sizes and individual variation, these are pieces of information are unfortunately often left out of science journalism. But it seems a bit funny of you to call this result "weak" based solely on your hunches at the same time as you deride the general public for saying "facts be damned." But this is the internet, where I have done similar things. Since I'm procrastinating, though, here's the actual article. Those of you not on university campuses probably won't be able to see anything more than the abstract. So, just how big are the effects, and how variable are they? The first effect is that on cortisol. Variability:

There was a significant group by time interaction effect (F[4.31,138.0]=2.64, p< .05), with the lowest cortisol responses to stress in the physical contact group. in addition, there was a significant main effect of group the total amount of cortisol increase (auci) (f[2,64]=3.29, p<.05), indicating the lowest increase of cortisol concentration in the physical contact group.

Effect size:

The mean absolute increase in salivary cortisol in response to stress was 11.98 nmol/l in subjects with no interaction, 13.29 nmol/l in subjects of the social support group, and 4.33 nmol/l in subjects with positive physical contact.

So I have no idea what those cortisol levels mean, but if you compute those p-values, they are both between .03 and .05. So significant, but not hugely so. FWIW, the heart rate effects appear to be bigger. Interestingly, they do some psychological assays of stress and anxiety, and there are no significant differences between the groups (no support, touching, and talking) on those tests.

By: transona5

transona5 — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:07:30 -0800

I'm willing to bet you the former is greater than the latter, meaning that really, the outcome is "women are slightly more likely to respond better to physical contact than to verbal reassurance". And you know that if the researchers had found exactly the opposite result, the spin would be that women are more emotional/verbal and men are more physical.

By: litfit

litfit — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:51:44 -0800

This goes a long way toward explaining why long-distance relationships never seem to work out...

By: Firas

Firas — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:06:15 -0800

Since nobody brought up the implicit point, I'll add that it may just mean that women are conditioned into getting something out of hugs than men are denied in a men-don't-touch-much culture (I'm not sure why the other thing--women not responding as favourably as men to verbal buckups--would hold though) thus meaning that neither hugs nor kudos really mean anything and are just mechanisms to incite some entirely separate psychological process.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 04:06:18 -0800

Skorgu writes 'Yeah, to heck with kudos, men need blowjobs.' Same thing. Men with no kudos get no blowjobs.

By: joecacti

joecacti — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:28:30 -0800

There's a book called The Marriage Builder that my wife and I read some years ago before our wedding. It boiled down to this: Women need to feel secure, men need to feel significant. If you can minister to your spouses need, you will increase each other's happiness.

By: es_de_bah

es_de_bah — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:25:53 -0800

as much as i enjoy a good cuddle, i must admit that this seems true of me and my lady-thing.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:49:48 -0800

I like hugs and kudos both. What does that make me? ::glance::

By: jonmc

jonmc — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:13:40 -0800

HIII-YAAA! ohhh, kudos. never mind.

By: mckenney

mckenney — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:51:46 -0800

It is exactly the opposite, gender-wise in my house. I, the chick, need talking, but really, super do not want to be cuddled ever. He is a glommy fucker.