Mental Health 503support seeking seems to be clear and ro-
bust, whereas the sex difference in avoidant
coping is open to debate.
Moving beyond self-reports of cop-
ing strategies, brain imaging research has
shown that coping strategies may operate
differently for females and males. One study
examined how women’s and men’s brains
respond during positive reappraisal (McRae
et al., 2008). Positive reappraisal is a common
coping strategy in which one tries to find
something good in the bad. Women and men
were shown a series of negative pictures and
asked to engage in positive reappraisal while
in a brain scanner. Although both women
and men reported a reduction in negative af-
fect when engaging in positive reappraisal,
their brains responded somewhat differently.
Women had greater increases in activity in
areas of the brain associated with reappraisal
(prefrontal region) and reward (ventral stria-
tal region) than men, suggesting that women
engage in more effort when reappraising than
men. These findings may suggest that women
engage in greater coping effort than men or
that the specific coping strategy of positive
reappraisal is more difficult for women than
men. We will learn much about gender and
coping with future studies like this one.Tend and Befriend. Historically, the gen-
eral response to stress has been described as
“fight or flight.” However, Taylor and col-
leagues (2000) argued that this response
may apply only to men, and that women’s
response to stress may be better understood
as “tend and befriend.” What is the evidence
for this hypothesis? We have seen that one of
the most consistent sex differences in cop-
ing is that women seek the support of others,
which is consistent with the tend and be-
friend idea. We also have some evidence that
men may engage in more avoidant coping ormore likely to use a strategy compared to
women? For example, imagine both women
and men report engaging in problem-
focused coping with equal frequency: “some
of the time.” For men, this may be the most
frequently employed strategy, whereas women
may report engaging in other strategies “al-
most all of the time.” In that case, men would
engage in problem-focused coping relatively
more often than women. Our meta-analysis
showed that men engage inrelativelymore ac-
tive coping strategies, and women engage in
relativelymore support seeking strategies.
More recent research has shown that
females and males tend to engage in a simi-
lar amount of most coping strategies with a
couple of exceptions consistent with the re-
search mentioned earlier. A study of couples
coping with cancer showed that women were
more likely than men to engage in only one
coping strategy—seeking emotional support
(Ptacek, Pierce, & Ptacek, 2007). A study of
elderly hemodialysis patients showed that
women were more likely to seek support and
to express emotions than men, whereas men
were more likely than women to engage in
avoidant coping (Yeh et al., 2009). A study
of coping in nearly 2,000 children and ado-
lescents showed that girls were more likely
to seek support and problem-solve than boys
(Eschenbeck, Kohlmann, & Lohaus, 2007).
The sex difference in support seeking was
larger among older than younger students,
largely because support seeking declined in
males with increased age. One study of chil-
dren and adolescents showed that boys were
more likely than girls to engage in avoidant
coping (Eschenbeck et al., 2007), whereas
another study showed that girls were more
likely than boys to engage in avoidant cop-
ing (Kort-Butler, 2009). An examination of
relative coping might reconcile these dis-
parate findings. Thus, the sex difference inM13_HELG0185_04_SE_C13.indd 503 6/21/11 12:55 PM