Who needs love when you've got your bros? Bromance, best described as the complex love and affection shared by two straight males, is just as beneficial as traditional romantic relationships - especially in times of stress.
Results from an interesting experiment conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, lead researchers to believe that male bonding improves health by significantly boosting an individual's ability to cope with stress.
Researchers found that male rats kept in the same cage were significantly more likely to bond when exposed to mild stress. This is surprising because under normal circumstances, male rats are instinctively aggressive when they encounter other male rats.
The latest study reveals that mild stress fosters sociability and cooperation among male rats. Researchers explained that male rats cuddled and touched more after being exposed to mildly stressful situations. Male rats housed in the same cage also experienced a spike in levels of the "love hormone" oxytocin.
"A bromance can be a good thing," said lead author Elizabeth Kirby, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley and postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford. "Males are getting a bad rap when you look at animal models of social interactions because they are assumed to be instinctively aggressive. But even rats can have a good cuddle - essentially a male-male bromance - to help recover from a bad day."
"Having friends is not un-masculine," she explained. "These rats are using their rat friendships to recover from what would otherwise be a negative experience. If rats can do it, men can do it too. And they definitely are, they just don't get as much credit in the research for that."
Researchers believe that the spike in oxytocin levels after stressful events is there to help bring people closer in times of hardship.
"We think oxytocin, which is released after stress, is a way of bringing people closer in times of acute stress, which leads to more sharing, bonding and potentially better fear extinction and an increase in cognitive health," explained first author Sandra Muroy, a UC Berkeley graduate student who launched the research while an undergraduate.
The latest findings are published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
