We've all heard of the "fight or flight" response to stress. Recently, researchers have discovered another paradigm called tend or befriend. This response is most often attributed to women. This paradigm is just now surfacing because the initial studies on stress were conducted on men. The tend or befriend model was developed in part by Los Angeles psychologist Shelley Taylor.
According to the "tend and befriend" theory, when placed in threatening situations individuals will protect offspring (tend) and seek out a social group for mutual defense (befriend).
When our group was developing target audience profile for our content marketing project last week, the wants and needs of our target included fitting in, and social acceptance. Although we identified this desire, we did not ask ourselves "why" this social desire existed.
Why do we really want to "be cool" and "fit in"? Connection is a necessary part of a healthy human existence, but could certain social desires be a subconscious response to stress or other perceived threats?
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