Gender and personality affect how we cope: study

When we succumb to illness, men and women employ different coping mechanisms that vary even more depending on our personalities, according to researchers at Washington State University and at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce.

For example, a single-symptom illness bothers women more than men, but women are more stoic than men when they succumb to a multi-symptom illness, according to study author Robert Rosenman of WSU.

“And perhaps more importantly, personality affects how women handle becoming sick, while men of all types react the same,” says Rosenman, a professor in the Department of Economic sciences.

Rosenman and his colleagues analysed a base of longitudinal data — the sort that tracks the same people over time, in which the same questions are asked during each follow up.

The sample involved 2,859 subjects of which 1,471 were men and 1,388 were women.

Participants were interrogated about their happiness and satisfaction with aspects of their life in addition to their physical and mental health.

Personalities were assessed and the research team processed the data to find that having one of two different personality types could make a woman resistant to mental illness.

Agreeable women who are likely to have strong social networks and high quality relationships are able to cope because they find themselves better supported in times of crisis, say the researchers.

The other type of woman is the type who lacks conscientiousness and feels out of control.

Ironically, such a woman is resistant to mental illness because she doesn’t feel the impact, says Rosenman.

For men, however, no correlation could be drawn linking particular personality traits with coping mechanisms for mental illness.

In the survey, the researchers’ primary goal was to determine how satisfied the participants were with their health.

Spinoff questions about gender and personality type added up to answers to that question, and the concept of health satisfaction is a branch in the growing field of what they call the economics of happiness.

“Many people think economics only has to do with money,” says Rosenman. “But it’s much more than that. We’re starting to look at what makes people happy and how that affects different aspects of their lives.”

The study was published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics.