I recently read a New York Times article that spoke of how men and women made decisions under stress. Picture a scene from “The Big Bang Theory” where the scientists are testing men and women under normal circumstances, when everything is low-key and manageable, men and women make decisions about risk in similar ways. We gather the best information we can, we weigh potential costs against potential gains, and then we choose how to act. But add stress to the situation – replicated in the lab by having participants submerge their hands in painfully cold 35-degree water – and men and women begin to part ways.
Several tests were given in the form of gambling games and the findings were the same. Men took more risks when they were stressed. They became more focused on big wins, even when they were more costly and less likely.
Levels of stress hormone called cortisol appear to be a major factor, according to Ruud van den Bos, a neurobiologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He and his colleagues have found that the tendency to take more risks when under pressure is stronger in men who experience a larger spike in cortisol. But in women he found that a slight increase in cortisol seemed actually to improve decision-making performance.
Next, Stephanie D. Preston, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Michigan and her colleagues told people that after 20 minutes, they would have to give a talk and would be judged on their speaking abilities. But first they had to play a gambling game. Anxious, both men and women initially had a harder time making good decisions in the game.
But the closer the women got to the stressful event, the better their decision-making became. Stressed women tended to make more advantageous decisions, looking for smaller, surer successes. Not so for the stressed men. The closer the timer got to zero, the more questionable the men’s decision making became, risking a lot for the slim chance of a big achievement.
Interesting enough, when women were stressed, however, from having to give a public speech, they actually found it easier than usual to empathize and take the other persons perspective. Just the opposite happened for the stressed men – they became more egocentric.
What does this tell us? You might want to bring in your female professionals to make those hard decisions when the going gets tough. Just saying.