News story: A study conducted by Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities has concluded that women are not attracted to men who show outward signs of stress.
Analysis: Women are particularly averse to stressed men during fertile stages of their lives and are capable of telling a stressed man from a calm one. In fact, for fertile women just one look can be enough to place a stressed man firmly on the reject pile even if he is otherwise an all-round box ticker.
Experts believe women’s choices are purely founded on evolutionary instincts. Women prefer men with nerves of steel, who are able to keep a good head even when faced with a crisis or a difficult situation. Women are also put off by stressed men as they are far more impulsive than their calmer counterparts and therefore less likely to offer the stability fertile women look for in a long term partner. For many men out there who suffer stress due to work and other life-induced factors, this may seem a little unfair, especially as such individuals are often hard-working decent professionals, but it’s difficult to fight Mother Nature.
Common health issues linked to stress may also support a woman’s natural instinct to avoid anxiety afflicted partners. Stress and anxiety are responsible for over half of cases of erectile dysfunction, a condition which inhibits a man’s ability to gain or maintain an erection sufficient for full sexual intercourse. An impotent partner is one you can’t expect to procreate with easily and in Darwinian terms becomes less ideal.
So, how can women recognise a stressed man just by looking at him? After all it’s not like male sufferers of stress have the words “I’m stressed” tattooed on their forehead, though the suggestion is that the symptoms of this problem clearly outwardly manifested themselves.
The answer to this quandary comes from scientific research that has identified a correlation between male facial features and the concentration of cortisol in the blood. It would seem that women are programmed to detect the stress hormone. However, women may struggle to successfully detect stress in men with low testosterone, as low levels of testosterone can mask excess cortisol. Cortisol and testosterone are both hormones produced by the adrenal glands and both are affected during times of stress. During times of stress cortisol production is increased and released into the body. Conversely, testosterone production is reduced.
