Sharing Stress

Super Awesome Science Show (SASS)

Have you ever had a great day in which nothing can go wrong and then out of nowhere a stressed person enters the room and your good feelings are replaced with feelings of anxiety and nervousness? You’re not alone. We may not realize it but stress is contagious and on this week’s show, we find out how this happens.

We first start with Dr. Stephanie Preston at the University of Michigan. She has studied how our compassion, known as empathy, can be a trigger for sharing someone else’s stress. She’ll help us to appreciate how our ability to care for someone else can work against us.

Our next guest explains that stress can also be shared through our noses. Dr. Jaideep Bains at the University of Calgary has uncovered how the odors we make when stressed may have an influence on other people. While his studies are in mice, his proposal of an “alert pheromone” may offer some perspective as to why some people just smell stressed.

In our SASS class, we examine how we can help to avoid sharing stress by being around friends. Dr. Loren Martin from the University of Toronto Mississauga explains that stress can be buffered by having people around us and dividing up the effect.

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Twitter: @JATetro

Email: [e-mail]
Guests:
Dr. Stephanie Preston
https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/faculty/prestos.html
Twitter: @prestostwit
Dr. Jaideep Bains
University of Calgary
https://hbi.ucalgary.ca/profiles/dr-jaideep-bains
Twitter: @stressynomics

Dr. Loren Martin
University of Toronto Mississauga
https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/psychology/faculty-staff/martin-loren
Twitter: @_ljmartin

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