14 DAY TRIAL // German investigators from the University of Freiburg have determined in a new research that putting men under a lot of stress does not necessarily make them more aggressive. In addition, it was found that the type of social contact males experience before the stressful event determines their response.
In other words, if they are subjected to positive social interactions before being stressed, they are less likely to act out aggressively than if they experience negative interactions beforehand, PsychCentral reports.
The new investigation takes on a 100-year-old belief which says that stressing a human or an animal results in triggering their flight-or-fight response. The work was led by professor Markus Heinrichs and Dr. Bernadette von Dawans.
“From previous studies in our laboratory, we already knew that positive social contact with a trusted individual before a stressful situation reduces the stress response,” the group writes in the latest issue of the international journal Psychological Science.