How did Shelley Taylor define the tend and befriend response?
The tend and befriend instinct contrasts with the fight or flight instinct, and was originally outlined by psychologist Shelley Taylor. While the fight or flight instinct encourages people to flee or become aggressive in stressful situations, the tend and befriend instinct encourages people to reach out to others.
What does tend and befriend refer to?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Tend-and-befriend is a behavior exhibited by some animals, including humans, in response to threat. It refers to protection of offspring (tending) and seeking out their social group for mutual defense (befriending).
What hormone is involved in tend and befriend?
hormone oxytocin
In particular, the pituitary hormone oxytocin, which downregulates the sympathetic nervous system activation that is characteristic of “fight or flight” reactions to stress, is released when females engage in nurturing and affiliative behavior, said Taylor.
How is the tend and befriend response the opposite of the fight-or-flight response?
Unlike the fight-or-flight response which allows one to fight against a threat if overcoming the threat is likely or flee if overcoming the threat is unlikely, the tend-and-befriend response is characterized by tending to young in times of stress and befriending those around in times of stress to increase the …
What causes tend befriends?
The tend and befriend theory maintains that in response to either a psychological or biological impetus to affiliate or both, people seek contact with others. As an affiliative hormone, oxytocin may provide this impetus for social contact.
Which gender is more likely to tend and befriend taking into account the fight or flight response?
Key points. Men often respond to stress via “fight or flight” while women’s strategy is frequently to “tend and befriend.” During stress, instead of releasing large amounts of norepinephrine and cortisol like men do, women secrete more endorphins.
Do females have fight or flight?
While females can have a flight or fight response, a body of bio-behavioral data indicates that oxytocin (a pituitary hormone implicated in attachment) is secreted during stress in females. Oxytocin inhibits defensive behavior associated with stress, anxiety and fear.
Which gender is more likely to tend and befriend taking into account the fight-or-flight response?
Which gender is more likely to tend-and-befriend taking into account the fight-or-flight response?
What is befriending in psychology?
In psychology, tend-and-befriend is a term used to describe a type of behavior that occurs in response to stress. The word ‘tend’ refers to tending to your offspring, and ‘befriend’ refers to seeking out social support during times of stress.
What are some gender differences in how males and females tend to respond to stress?
According to some psychologists, there is a basic difference in the way men and women respond to social stress: for men, it’s either “fight or flight” while for women it’s “tend and befriend.” Physiologist Walter Cannon—a pioneer of research on stress—argued in the 1930s that “fight-or-flight” is a universal …
Why are females more prone to stress?
Women more likely to be stressed than men And they often felt that when a company cut its workforce, men who had spent time networking with senior colleagues were better positioned to retain their jobs, while women who had responsibilities to children at home were not always able to have bonded in the same way.
What does tend and befriend mean in psychology?
It refers to protection of offspring (tending) and seeking out the social group for mutual defense (befriending). In evolutionary psychology, tend-and-befriend is theorized as having evolved as the typical female response to stress, just as the primary male response was fight-or-flight.
Is the tend-and-befriend model about parenting or biobehavioral responses to stress?
As Taylor et al. (2002) explained upon receiving the same criticism from peers Geary and Flinn (2002), “The tend-and-befriend model is not about parenting; however, it is a model of biobehavioral responses to stress.”
What are some examples of tend-and-befriend models in psychology?
For example, some aspects of the tend-and-befriend model may characterize male responses to stress under some conditions as well.
What drives the tend-and-befriend pattern?
The biobehavioral mechanism that underlies the tend-and-befriend pattern appears to draw on the attachment-caregiving system, and neuroendocrine evidence from animal and human studies suggests that oxytocin, in conjunction with female reproductive hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms, may be at its core.