Picture it. You step into the elevator and your boss is standing there. He asks your opinion on a big deal your company is putting together - something about weighing short-term payoffs versus potential long-term gains - and you have less than a minute to wow him with your thinking, reasoning, and decision making skills. What predicts whether you will panic or get through the encounter without losing your cool? New research suggests that one factor is your relationship status.
People who have strong social support systems are less likely to be stressed out by anxiety-provoking situation such as having to give a speech, take a big test, or pitch to their boss, Dario Maestripieri and colleagues, researchers at the University of Chicago, recently showed.1 These researchers investigated cortisol levels in a sample of over 500 MBA students before and after they took a set of computerized economic decision-making tests where the students were under quite a bit of pressure to perform well.
A hormone produced by the adrenal gland, cortisol is associated with several stress-related changes in the body, such as lower pain sensitivity and a quick burst of energy under duress. When people are in stressful situations, cortisol is secreted at higher levels and, because of this, it is often referred to as the "stress hormone." This means that cortisol is a quick-and-easy way to get a handle on a person's stress level at a particular time and conveniently this can be done by having someone spit in a tiny tube.
What the researchers found was that being in a relationship was like a stress vaccine. The cortisol levels of MBA students without a spouse spiked after the economic decision making test. This was not the case for people who were in relationships. Indeed, even the extent of the relationship commitment mattered. MBAs who were married with children showed less cortisol reaction than those married without children, who showed less of a cortisol spike than MBAs with partners but who were not married.
Of course, we have known for some time that social support can mitigate stress. For instance, in 2008, researchers at the University of Zurich found that men who were able to spend time with their spouses before having to prepare a public speech showed less of a cortisol increase in anticipation of the anxiety-provoking speaking situation than those who didn't spend time with their spouse. However, Dr. Maestripieri's work is unique in that the MBA students' partners were not asked to join them before the decision making test. This suggests that spousal benefits aren't just about having someone present. Moreover, the MBA students were in their mid-20s to mid-30s, suggesting that you don't need years of compounding social support to reap the benefits of a spouse.
Of course the question of why spouses serve as a stress vaccine remains unanswered. One possibility is that being in a relationship changes your general attitude about challenges. Having a stable home situation may make you less reactive to high-stakes performance situations in general. A second possibility is that people less prone to stress out in the first place are more likely to be in a committed relationship. These possibilities are not mutually exclusive, both could be going on.
Finally, there are a few caveats to the benefits of social support that should be mentioned. It's been shown that having a spouse present before a do-or-die situation is beneficial only if you are in a healthy relationship. The opportunity to spend time with your spouse before a stressful performance situation, when you are not in a good place with this person to begin with, is actually more destructive than if you were alone. Moreover, men seem to benefit more from their partner's support than women do. This is true in Dr. Maestripieri's work and in other work as well. Indeed, in one study, women's cortisol levels went up more during a stressful situation when their boyfriends were present beforehand relative to when they were not. Whether this was due to a lack of support on the part of the boyfriend or an inability of the women to receive it is still a question open to debate.
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1 Maestripieri, D., Barani, N. M., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2010) Between- and within-sex variation in hormonal responses to psychological stress in a large sample of college students. Stress, 13, 413-424.
