Empathic stress can be contagious

Empathic stress is contagious

04/23/2014

It has long been known that yawning is contagious. But now German researchers found that this can also be true for stress. According to this, observing people in tense situations as well as stress on television leads to the release of stress hormones. The scientists speak of so-called empathic stress.

Watching strained people drives up the pulse
Yawning is contagious. This has been known for a long time. But German researchers have now found that this also applies to stress. Even observing people in tense situations can ensure that their own body releases the stress hormone cortisol and increases blood pressure and heart rate. The scientists speak of it „empathic stress“. The study results of the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and the Dresden University of Technology were recently published in the journal „Psychoneuroendocrinology“ released.

Significant increase in stress hormone detected
In their study, the research team had volunteers solve difficult mind-reading tasks and complete job interviews. Their performance was assessed by two alleged behavioral analysts, creating a stressful situation. As it turned out, only five percent of the participants could not be disturbed. All others showed a significant increase in cortisol levels. This first group was observed during the experiment by other subjects. A significant increase in cortisol was also observed in 26 percent of those who were not themselves stressed.

Emotional attachment has a particularly strong effect
This effect was particularly strong when observer and stressed person combined a partnership relationship. 40 percent of them reacted in this way. But even with completely strangers, the stress still jumped to ten percent of the observers. As a result, emotional attachment is not a requirement for empathic stress. Already years ago, a yawning relationship between emotional closeness and the yawning was noted. Researchers at the University of Pisa had found in a study that the higher the emotional connection with the other person is, the more contagious the yawning. This was most pronounced among family members, followed closely by friends and most recently by strangers.

Stress has enormous contagion potential
If the spectators were able to follow the events directly in the German experiment, 30 percent of them reacted in a stressed way. But even if they only saw this stress test on one screen, that was enough to push up the cortisol level in 24 percent of the observers. „This means that even television programs that confront me with the suffering of others, the stress can be transferred to me“, said Veronika Engert from the Max Planck Institute. „Stress has a huge contagion potential“, said Engert, who is one of the first authors of the study. Therefore, especially people in helper professions or members of permanently stressed persons are affected by the potentially harmful consequences of empathic stress. For anyone who is constantly confronted directly with the suffering and stress of others, has an increased risk of even suffering from it.

Stress as a trigger of various diseases
The results also cleared up with a common prejudice: Men and women reacted equally often with empathic stress. „On questionnaires, women consider themselves more empathetic than men do. So far, however, this has not been demonstrated in any experiment using objective biological markers“, so the expert. Further studies will explore how stress is accurately transmitted and what can be done to reduce its negative impact on society. After all, stress is considered to be a possible cause of illnesses such as depression or burnout. (Sb)