infonet-economy

Psychosocial stress precipitates a wide spectrum of diseases with major public-health significance.The fight-or-flight response is generally regarded as the prototypic human stress response, bothphysiologically and behaviorally. Given that having positive social interactions before beingexposed to acute stress plays a preeminent role in helping individuals control their stressresponse, engaging in prosocial behavior in response to stress (tend-and-befriend) might also be aprotective pattern. Little is known, however, about the immediate social responses followingstress in humans. Here we show that participants who experienced acute social stress, induced bya standardized laboratory stressor, engaged in substantially more prosocial behavior (trust,trustworthiness, and sharing) compared with participants in a control condition, who did notexperience socioevaluative threat. These effects were highly specific: Stress did not affect thereadiness to exhibit antisocial behavior or to bear nonsocial risks. These results show that stresstriggers social approach behavior, which operates as a potent stress-buffering strategy in humans,thereby providing evidence for the tend-and-befriend hypothesis.