Stress

According to the POSIWID principle, the purpose of some complex artefact or phenomenon is what it does. There are people who see positive value in stress. There are also people who, while claiming to dislike stress, still act in ways that increase stress for themselves and other people.

Fight / Flight - Stress provides energy for contingencies and emergencies. It may unlock hidden reserves of power and creativity.

Selection - Stress may act as a selection mechanism. It identifies and promotes those tough enough to withstand stress.

Motivation - Stress may act as a stimulant. Some managers deliberately put their staff, suppliers and other people under stress, in the belief that this will produce better outcomes.

Pleasure - Freud's pleasure principle is based on the balance between excitement and calm.

Trust - Perhaps the most effective way of establishing authentic trust between individuals and teams is to have a shared experience of stress. This is sometimes called "going though fire together".

Explanation - Like many other psychosocial phenomena, stress is a totem in some organizations (in other words, held up as a cause and explanation of all sorts of phenomena), and is taboo in other organizations (in other words, not able to be acknowledged or cited as an excuse). The effects and symptoms of stress are likely to be very different between these organizations.

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Roger Dobson, Does stress help us succeed? (Independent, 4 May 2011)

Sex and Stress

"Forget learning lines or polishing jokes - having sex may be the best way to prepare for giving a speech. New Scientist magazine reports that Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, found having sex can help keep stress at bay." [BBC News via James Governor]

I have often noticed that politicians have busy sex lives. There are many possible explanations for this, including the attractions and opportunities of power and of living apart from their spouses. There are people (rival politicians and journalists) who are happy to expose any embarrassing activities or unsuitable relationships. There may even be people who deliberately lure politicians and other powerful people into compromising situations.

See earlier posts Achilles Heel (Jan 2006), Identity Theft (Jan 2006), Mr Prescott Regrets (April 2006), Mr Prescott Remains (May 2006).

But Brody's research suggests that the causal link may be the other way around. If the people with the busiest sex lives are the best public speakers, then highly sexed people have an advantage at the hustings, as long as they don't obviously offend against public morality. After all, Jimmy Carter's interview with Playboy magazine (in which he admitted to lusting after other women, committing adultery in his heart) did not stop his becoming president.


Links updated 20 April 2015

Female Pleasure 2

Following my previous post on the purpose of female pleasure, my attention has been drawn (by this post in the Now Economy blog) to a piece of research (pdf) that suggests that oxytocin increases trusting behaviour. (The Now Economy blog raises important questions about the reseach method for measuring trusting behaviour, but I'm not going to address these questions here.)

Oxytocin has often been cited as a mechanism linking female pleasure to a range of social and biological effects.

• Oxytocin is an altruistic hormone, a love hormone (Michael Odent)
  
• Oxytocin deficiency enhances stress, obesity and psychotic behavior, impairs cognitive functions and increases breast-cancer risk. (Wai Says)
  

Now if sexual pleasure makes you trust people, then POSIWID suggests that this may be a secondary purpose of sex. We may then intervene in this causal pattern by abstaining prior to those activities where we wish to remain guarded. (For example, sportsmen are often temporarily separated from their bedmates before a major event.) This kind of intervention is similar to that of Ulysses and the Sirens, brilliantly analysed by Jon Elster.

Meanwhile Marnia Robinson and Gary Wilson argue that conventional sex tends to over-stimulate the pleasure/reward center deep within the brain. Over time, this leads to subconscious defensiveness and emotional distance between partners. Once uneasiness enters an intimate relationship, the bond between the partners tends to weaken, ultimately producing less oxytocin. In their view, biology's agenda unravels relationships over time despite oxytocin's bonding properties, and they advocate alternative practices that maintain and increase oxytocin between partners - in other words, intervening to subvert what they believe to be biology's agenda.

So now we have two theories. One in which the quantity of trust depends on the quantity of oxytocin, and one in which the quantity of oxytocin depends on the quantity of trust.

If we can't tell which is the effect, and which the cause, then POSIWID becomes a spiral.