Women turn to porn, men turn to chocolate due to coronavirus stress

man eating chocolate
Men have turned to chocolate to cope with pandemic stress (Getty)

In stressful situations, men turn to pornography and women reach for chocolates – it’s not just stereotyping, it’s scientific fact, according to Israeli researchers.

But curiously, in the wave of stress due to the coronavirus, men are turning to chocolates (while still indulging in alcohol and porn).

Women, likewise are turning to pornography and alcohol (while still eating sweets), according to a paper submitted for publication by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Yeshiva University researchers.

The researchers surveyed 115 British participants on their post-coronavirus habits including 46 men and 69 women.

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Dr Enav Friedmann, head of the BGU Marketing Lab at the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, said, “Countless studies show that in highly stressful times, men typically consume more alcohol and pornography, while women turned to sweets for their binging.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has upended these assumptions as our research debunks the commonly accepted perceptions of various stereotypical behaviors. Under pressure, we are more alike.”

Dr Friedman believes that the increased stress of the pandemic led to lower emotional regulation in both men and women.

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In the ongoing research project, Dr Friedmann conducted an additional experiment to measure facial responses using special sensors.

This led to people of both sexes indulging in stress behaviours expected of the opposite sex, Dr Friedman believes.

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“Previous research stressed the biological differences between men and women, but the stress from the pandemic has caused both sexes to be flooded with emotions that neutralize gender consumer behavior and lower emotional regulation,” Dr Friedmann says.

“The stress allows us, in effect, to see the automatic behavior stripped of its gendered expectations.”

“Marketers assumed that women and men act differently, so they focused their marketing based on gender segmentation,” Friedman says.

“From now until restoration of the world order, marketers may have to rethink the approach that alcohol and porn are categories that are consumed more by men compared to sweets that are consumed more by women.”

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This week, scientists announced they may be able to predict where coronavirus hotspots are about to erupt, simply by analysing Google searches.

Researchers found that surges in search terms related to coronavirus symptoms tend to happen around one or two weeks before a rise in infections is reported in the area.

The finding could offer doctors a new tool to track the virus, the researchers say.

The researchers compared data from Google Trends for gastrointestinal symptoms related to COVID-19, including abdominal pain, diarrhoea and ageusia (loss of taste) with Harvard data on the incidence for the virus, ScienceAlert reported.