Alyssa Kramer

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Casto, Kathleen

Area of Concentration

Biopsychology

Abstract

Behavioral responses to stress have typically been characterized as “fighting” or “fleeing.” However, humans may show a more complex set of behavioral strategies that are influenced by factors such as gender socialization, trauma, and personality. Fawning has recently been introduced as a response to stress that involves conflict avoidance. Although this term has been used colloquially, there is little empirical research that explores the fawn response and how factors such as gender, trauma, and personality may be involved in this stress response. The purpose of this study is to conduct an initial exploration on these factors. Sixty-nine undergraduate participants were given a survey that measured early life adversity, gender identity, personality, and stress response. The underrepresentation of men in the sample prevented us from being able to successfully analyze gender’s effect on stress response. Both of the early life adversity scales were significantly positively correlated with fawning, suggesting that trauma may increase conflict avoidance in response to stress. Further, measures of social avoidance and fear of negative evaluation were significantly positively correlated with each other, as well as trait neuroticism. While there were significant correlations between the variables of interest, the self-report method of data collection makes it difficult to assume generalizability outside this sample; however, the data suggest that there may be a more complex system of stress response beyond fight and flight that is influenced by trauma and personality.

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