HealthyGamerGG - The Biology Of Why Men Isolate

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explores the "compliment gap" and how it reveals deep-seated biological differences in how men and women handle loneliness. He explains why a simple compliment can become a "core memory" for a man while often being a source of stress or harassment for a woman, and provides a scientific roadmap for bridging this social divide. What to expect in this episode: The Compliment Gap: A breakdown of why women receive 75% of all compliments—mostly regarding appearance—while men receive only 25%, primarily focused on performance. The Science of Bonding: A look at how estrogen facilitates the bonding hormone oxytocin, while testosterone can actually inhibit it, especially during periods of stress. Stress Responses: Understanding why women naturally "tend and befriend" to cope with stress, while men are biologically wired for a "fight or flight" response that often leads to isolation. Navigating Social Interaction: Practical tips for giving "safe" compliments—such as focusing on possessions or specific style choices—and how to graciously receive positive energy without "parrying" it away. The Loneliness Epidemic: Why men’s struggle with connection is a systemic biological and conditioning issue, rather than just an individual failure. Bridging the Empathy Gap: An analysis of the different subjective experiences of the world, from the high frequency of harassment women face to the "mud-like" resistance men feel when trying to form bonds.HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Ocinoja, but you can call me Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. So I don't know if you guys have seen these memes where, you know, there's some kind of comic where a woman is getting complimented slash harassed on her

appearance, and then someone does a gender swap, and then dudes are like, yeah, this would be great. I'd be totally fine with this. So today we're going to talk a little bit about compliments. We're going to dig into the science of what kind of attention men receive, what kind of attention women receive. And the really interesting thing about this is as we look at compliments, we will uncover some very crucial mechanisms that are driving the loneliness epidemic and may explain why the loneliness epidemic is statistically what appears to be worse for men than women. And it turns out that there are some aspects of biology, specifically the effect of estrogen and testosterone, on oxytocin. So oxytocin is a bonding hormone, facilitates the connection

between human beings. And it turns out that estrogen facilitates oxytocin's action. So facilitates the formation of bonds, whereas testosterone inhibits it, especially under periods of stress. And so this is kind of a weird video because we're going to start with compliments and we're going to sort of move on to loneliness. So let's get started with compliments. First thing to understand, women receive about 75% of all compliments. Men receive about 25%. The earliest research on this started in the 80s and then studies through about 2008, which is the last study that I looked at, it basically maintained this ratio. So first reason why compliments are core memories for dudes, they don't receive them much. So here's what's really interesting. It's not just the quantity of

compliments. It is also the type of compliment. So 75% of compliments that women receive are on their appearance. Interestingly enough, the majority of compliments that women receive on their appearance are from other women, and the majority of compliments that men receive are on their performance. But complimenting people in today's world is a little bit tricky, because if I compliment a woman on her appearance, will this be perceived as unwanted attention or sexual harassment? because I certainly don't want to do that. But on the flip side, how do I express appreciation for someone, even if I'm not interested in them in a romantic way?

Or how do I express appreciation for them if I am interested in them in a romantic way? And then we get to dudes complimenting other dudes. So this is a great example of this from a research paper where one guy's like, hey, I like your shirt. And the other dude's like, nice. I like your face. So we're going to talk a little bit about how to compliment people and also how to receive compliments.

So let's get into the type of compliments and figure out which ones are appropriate and not appropriate. First thing is we can compliment someone's appearance. So 75% of the compliments that women receive are on their appearance. The majority of appearance-based compliments received by women are given by women, right? So women compliment other women's appearance all the time. Second thing is the majority of compliments that men receive are based on their performance. Okay, so about 70% of compliments that men, receive are on their performance. Once you enter a work setting, 68% of compliments that women receive

are on their performance, right? So it used to be about 75% were on their appearance. In the work setting, they get complimented on their performance a lot more. That's a good shift. 98% of compliments that men receive in the workplace are based on their performance. So rule number one, if you are working with someone, you want to complement their performance, not their appearance unless it's a female-to-female relationship where arguably you can still get away with that. But generally speaking, don't compliment people's appearance in the workplace. Second thing, if you are going to compliment someone's appearance, a good way to do it is to take an article of their clothing or their hairstyle, one attribute of their appearance, and tie it to them

specifically. For example, Dr. Kay, you're rocking that hoodie. So we're not saying they're pretty. we're not objectifying a part of them. We're actually usually referring to an object that they have and tying it to them, making it special about them. The way that you are pulling off that outfit is awesome. You're really knocking that outfit out of the park.

You're really rocking that hairstyle. You're really like that that beer gut is absolutely enviable, bro. Okay? So if we want to compliment appearance, don't just call someone hot unless you're trying to indicate romantic interest. you can still appreciate someone's appearance without making it threatening or sexual. Third thing is men especially like this, you can comment on someone's possessions. Super safe way to give a compliment.

That's an awesome truck. I love that grill. That's an epic mouse pad. I really like that pen. You can compliment someone's stuff and it tends to be pretty safe. Next thing that we got to talk about because we got to do social rehab for the internet is how to receive compliments. Generally speaking, the best thing to do is to appreciate someone. giving you a compliment. So this is kind of like parrying a compliment where it's like,

someone sends a compliment your way and then you knock it back by sending one of your own. And I love this in video games because there's this parry mechanic, right? Which is one attack is countered by another attack. But we don't want to parry compliments. What we want to do is appreciate them. So a lot of times what happens is we feel really embarrassed when someone notices something nice about us. And then what we do is we have to reverse uno them. I really like your hair. Oh, well, I really like your hair. feel really uncomfortable receiving that compliment. So I sort of reject it and turn the tables onto you.

Instead, what you can do is appreciate their compliment. This is the right way to receive their positive energy and give positive energy back. Oh, I really love the way that you, you know, you're rocking that sweater. And then you can appreciate that by saying, yeah, I actually like looked at three or four of them. I wasn't sure which one to get. Thank you so much for noticing, right? You can say something like that. You can appreciate, thank you for noticing. I appreciate you noticing, thank you. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks, bro. Okay? So you can just appreciate it. That's really good. Next thing is that if you do feel embarrassed, that's actually totally fine. So here's the cool thing. If someone compliments you and you feel embarrassed, that is their way

of knowing that the compliment worked, right? You're not confused. You're not upset. They tickled you. They tickled your emotions in a really nice way. So you feel better about that. Now, this becomes really important because, you know, there are tweets like this one where people will say, yeah, 50% of the loneliness epidemic is because dudes are completely uninvested in social interaction. And many of us as men are not taught how to compliment people, but the broader question still remains that why is it that men receive so few compliments? Why is it that when we receive a compliment, it feels like a core memory? And why is it that it is so hard for people to connect? But it turns out that biology has a huge part to play here.

Relationships have never been easy. Anytime you interact with someone, you're dealing with their unique soup of emotions, expectations, and even traumatic baggage. And the fact that we're all texting now and dating apps or a thing is not making things easier. That's why we developed a coaching program to help our community with modern relationship problems.

Working with a coach can help you build skills like setting boundaries, communicating effectively and navigating conflict. So if y'all are struggling with your relationships, check out the link in the description below. So from a big picture standpoint, I want you all to think about this. When we see a systemic effect, right? So if all men, not all men, but if a lot of men,

if a majority of men or a significant minority of men, struggle in forming relationships, chances are there is a systemic reason. It is not individual responsibility. There is something going on with the way that men are conditioned, our biology that results in this thing. And unless we understand those systemic factors, we can't place the responsibility on an individual dude to solve a systems-based problem.

What I think a lot of people don't realize is how hard it is for men to form bonds, how we're biologically impaired, literally, at forming bonds, especially when we're under stress. So this is a really fascinating study. In their analysis of gender differences in coping, Lucknow et al found that the largest difference arose on seeking and using social support

and combined significance of their effect was significant beyond the P value of this is an astronomical P value, y'all. Of the 26 studies that tested gender differences, one study showed no difference and 25 favored women. This is really important to understand. when women are under periods of stress, they cope with that stress by forming bonds. But the question is why, right? So what is different about women as compared to men?

And this is what's really fascinating. So estrogen actually induces oxytocin transcription. So what does this mean? This means that when we have estrogen floating around, it actually causes us to create oxytocin and has a synergistic effect with oxytocin. And oxytocin is our bonding hormone. So what we see is that the female sex hormone is directly responsible for the formation of bonds and for the drive to form bonds. Whereas if we look at testosterone, the higher our testosterone levels are, this has an inhibiting effect on oxytocin. When men are under periods of stress, we actually don't respond by forming bonds with other people. We actually see a hyper arousal. So we tend to be problem solvers. We tend to focus on solutions. We also bear that burden

by ourselves. It's not just the effect of estrogen and testosterone and oxytocin. The brains of men and women, when we're faced with stress, also behave differently. So the hypothesis that stress responses in men may be primarily characterized as fight or flight is supported by the observation that RPFC, right prefrontal cortex activation and left orbital cortex activation with stress is predominantly observed in the male brain. What this research basically shows us is that when we are under periods of stress, men and women respond differently based on the hormones in our body. Okay? So when women are under high levels of stress, they tend to tend and befriend. Estrogen mediates an increase in oxytocin production and also acts synergistically with oxytocin, allowing us to

form bonds with other people. Hence that paper that we looked at earlier, where 25 out of the 26th studies that we looked at, women tend to cope by forming social bonds. Now, the problem is that testosterone has the absolute opposite effect. When men are under periods of stress, they engage in a fight or flight response where testosterone increases, cortisol increases, and this actually blunts the effect of oxytocin, which results in men isolating, and this is a biological effect. Now, this is where I think a lot of people will jump to saying, like, okay, like men just need to change, right? This is where, like, the subjective experience of men doesn't matter. Men need to compliment each other more, which I totally agree with, by the way, which is why we

taught y'all how to compliment, okay? But I want to point this out because I think if you guys want to fix your gender dynamics, both with your own gender and the opposite gender with the gender that you're attracted to, I don't care. If you want to improve your relationships with the people around you, you must understand their experience of the world. The biggest mistake that I see right now is we are judging other. people. Men are judging women, women are judging men, based on our experience. So when we see a woman

receiving lots of compliments, we think to ourselves, I am starved for compliments. This is amazing. I don't understand why this person is complaining. And when men say this kind of stuff, like, I would love this. I don't think they understand the experience of a woman in today's world. Okay. So let's look at some scary statistics. The first two items, cat calls whistles and stares and unwanted sexual attention were reported to be experienced once a month by 32 and 40% of the sample. Strikingly, 31% reported experiencing cat calls whistles or stares from strangers every few days or more. Over one third of participants reported hearing offensive sexual jokes or sexist remarks from strangers once a month. In addition, 36 reported being the victim of unwanted touching or stroking

once a month. So I think this is where like what a lot of dudes I think miss about women's experiences are the frequency. So if you think that the amount of attention that women receive is okay, we'll get to why you think like other reasons because you're so starved. But if you think it's okay, I think the thing that people are usually missing here is the frequency. So I want you, if you're a dude, I want you to imagine someone that you're not attracted to. And what would the effect on your psychology be if from every few days to one, a month. This person stroked you, made sexual advances, stared at you, touched you in ways that you don't want, and you're like, okay, I can handle it once. But imagine if this happened every few

days to one month, what effect would that have on your psychology? On the flip side, if you're a woman who thinks that men can just form bonds, I want y'all to really appreciate how difficult this is for us biologically. It is easy for you to form bonds. It is natural for you to form bonds, because based on the estrogen levels in your body and the oxytocin levels in your body, what feels natural to you, what feels intuitive to you, is to bond with somebody else. Whereas we are actually wired in the opposite way. What feels natural to us is to isolate. And this is where, like, I'm going to avoid a pitfall because this is the point where a lot of people may be drawing what I would call a false equivalency. Because here I am talking about female sexual harassment, and here I am talking about

male loneliness, and I'm not saying that these two are equivalent in any way, shape, or form. My point is that we take for granted based on our own biology, right? So, like, my favorite example of this is parents who have never experienced depression, who tell their children to just get out of bed. But if you all have never experienced depression, you have been moving through air your whole life, which I know sounds weird. So when I get up and I walk around, I literally move through air. There is no resistance for me to get up and walk to the door. When I have patients who have depression, walking to the door feels like moving through mud, feels like walking through molasses. There is a fundamental subjective experience that makes it so hard to just get out of bed and walk to

the door. It literally feels like a profound amount of resistance. And unless you understand that this is the experience of men when it comes to loneliness, their natural inclination, their biology is telling them to isolate. Their biology is telling them to handle things on their own. Their biology is literally telling them to fight or to run away. Don't tend and befriend. And until we understand that, we will never understand why compliments our core memories for dudes.

Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.