Why are women more fatigued than men? The roles of stress, sleep, and repetitive negative thinking, 2025, Golmohamadi et al

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Why are women more fatigued than men? The roles of stress, sleep, and repetitive negative thinking

Shima Golmohamadi, Bronwyn M. Graham

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Abstract
Fatigue, a state of prolonged tiredness that cannot be alleviated through rest, is twice as likely to affect women than men. To account for women’s higher rates of fatigue, we examined three factors which have both exhibited consistent sex differences in the literature and have been linked to fatigue: stress, sleep, and repetitive negative thinking (RNT).

In the first study, 193 undergraduate students reported their levels of fatigue, stress, sleep quality and RNT over the past month. Mediation analysis showed that the effect of sex on fatigue was partially mediated through stress, sleep, and the impact of stress on sleep, but not RNT.

In the second study, 205 undergraduate students underwent the same procedures as in Study 1 to test the whether the findings from the first study were replicable in an independent sample. These students were then sent seven follow-ups across 2 weeks to measure their momentary fatigue, daily stress, and previous night’s sleep quality. In the second mediation analysis, sleep did not mediate the impact of sex on fatigue; however, all other pathways found in the first study were replicated. With regard to the prospective measurements, women reported greater fatigue, even when accounting for sleep and stress, and poorer sleep and higher stress predicted fatigue both at population and individual levels.

Taken together, these findings suggest that sex differences in fatigue could be in part driven by sex differences in stress.

Link | PDF (Psychology, Health & Medicine) [Open Access]
 
Study 1:
Two hundred participants were recruited from university students enrolled in first-year undergraduate psychology courses in return for course credit, and no exclusion criteria were applied for study eligibility.
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Study 2:
Participants were 205 undergraduate students (79 males and 126 females) enrolled in first-year psychology courses in return for course credit, and no exclusion criteria were applied for study eligibility.
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What about biology - anemia is common in menstruating women, as is menstrual pain and the effect on mood and sleep of hormone cycles. But of course it has to all be down to psychological factors like repetitive negative thinking, and us poor delicate females being unable to handle stress.
 
Trish said:
What about biology - anemia is common in menstruating women, as is menstrual pain and the effect on mood and sleep of hormone cycles. But of course it has to all be down to psychological factors like repetitive negative thinking, and us poor delicate females being unable to handle stress.
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I mean generally I expect the energy expenditure Vis a Vis creating eggs/mentrual cycle is far higher in women than the equivalent (spermatogenesis) in men.
 
I'd like to just go back to the days of the Stanford prison experiment. Maybe just lock things there. Psychology back then was just as silly but at least it didn't take itself seriously and had far less influence. Which was a good thing.

I have no idea what anyone thinks this can contribute to anything. I guess it's just training, but training professionals poorly is just not a good idea. It explains a lot, though.

Decades of this nonsense, and no one can even properly define what stress even means. Everyone has a different meaning for it, and most of the time it means "I don't like this situation", but there are people who can only function this way, so it's all over the place. But the way it's been misused for decades is just entirely pointless.

It almost looks like a cry for help to me.
 
Yeah it’s a mystery why women with monthly hormone fluctuations and associated energy expenditure not to mention additional financial costs and reduced safety and near guaranteed sexual assault, should by their 20s be more fatigued.
Fatigue, as we know, is caused by repeated negative thoughts yet they don’t have them. A real mystery.
 
Utsikt said:
Study 1:

Study 2:
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It's so bad isn't it: 'enrolled for course credit'. No down side of saying anything other than what would please the person doing it.

Just like when it has been patients they've been in a position where it is often an investigator or staff who are woven into the clinic system or able to write 'notes' of things like 'non-compliance' back to GP that affects other medical care or to employers.

It is worse than an employer doing a staff survey that says either 'you get a credit on your record for completing this with ... someone else who might mark your future job interview/you might want to get into the area of'

or 'this isn't anonymous and we can report back to your boss etc. you know what we expect you will be saying if you've been working hard enough on changing'


I'm not completely sure how so many of these types of methods that don't insulate from likelihood of coercion and make sure that is underlined so that people feel truly safe from ie it isn't possible, so there is actually no perceived threat due to measures that make it completely independent in the data collection stage by someone who will never be collected to others who could impact them can think they are doing anything other than repeating the same experiment over and over again of how perceived threat or perceived reward produces the answers required in different demographics.
 
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Yann04 said:
Definitely could see some men who are the type who see weakness as a moral failing or something not admitting they are fatigued. That kind of thinking is more common among men in my experience.
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I think* many men have been taught to be confident in just asserting 'can't' on things like function, and they are certainly in general much more empowered and don't think twice of saying no or just doing what they want and seeing it as a 'need' (eg with their sports or social activities vs the female partner whether it is in arranging nights for dates or in spreading committment of childcare etc)

I'd be intrigued by the exact wording of these questions too because I could well imagine the question being ambiguous as they normally are and someone being faced with not knowing whether it meant 'more fatigued than normal' rather than 'more fatigued it seems than your peers in general for doing the same thing' or even 'are you fatigued right now' and it being more about the night sleep before and strong cup of coffee vs busy day until they got to the session.

I need the word tired even though I don't use it to describe my 'symptoms' and that is because in my world and scale I can be tired for me from that day which is more than ideal. Yet if I was describing my level of exhaustion as a symptom it would be a comparator to the me before at various time points (have I got worse in the last year, compared to me before) or compared to what the variety of others around me seem capable of doing. I've no idea what it must be like to wake up and not be ill and think about the 'how' as a masterplan for pretty straightforward stuff or day like/because it was an impossible rubiks cube. So I still wouldn't even be able to interpret the way most of these people word these questions.

What is someone who has low involvement (marketing term meaning level of importance to them) because they are just ticking the box filling it in and turning it up going to care about thinking which one they are answering of those meanings.

and women are taught to be more second guessing of themselves and use terms like fatigued or emotional terms because they get corrected all the time by antagonistic women as well as men.

it is actually quite hard to think and assess how you feel, then do so on specific factors. Add in the cultural stuff putting words into different groups' mouths and telling them how to say or express certain things or to see that x feeling is actually y... many people are like robots these days spouting off the toxic positivity and poisonous 'nice but bitchy advice' they don't realise isn't nice at all to anyone with a problem. Of that age group there seems to be a right old push via culture to 'not be negative' as if anything but toxic positivity is a banned thing, so that surely has to affect what people perceive when they are answering that question.

And they are told to use the term 'its affecting my mental health' for eg just lockdown being not fun for them at the moment, rather than really respecting that term as not an informal stretched spectrum covering just not ill people being a bit unhappy (the irony is that I know that line is familiar from being said by eg Gerada recently - but I also note she was the one encouraging it all the way up to this latest point ie creating it, and still seems to be mainly speaking about a totally different group in people with ADHD or autism etc rather than meaning let's stop this sort of fake labelling for those exhausted to be accused of rumination being the cause).


PLus I can't help but think, optional module only in psychology or not the pop psych has been such a buzz thing/bps has been so pushed into brainwashing schoolkids, these are a generation who will have been primed in the language and very idea being a truism (ie not even up for debate) that if you feel tired its because you are being negative way probably even more than the sum of the parts which are the above questions on their own.

SO that sample is likely to almost think the 'are you being negative' has to correlate with 'do you feel exhausted' responses to make sense in the same way you'd get on a briggs-meyer type test in a job interview eg a question that asks are you conscientious, and then a later one asking whether you'd stay late to fix a problem someone else had caused but you'd spotted, or 'I like knowing I've done a good job'.

So it is interesting the correlation isn't there that they expected. Because I think that default will have almost been programmed into them. Except for them being taught the 'if you feel tired start thinking more positively' and then when it doesn't change anything being told 'it takes time to work, and maybe you aren't doing it hard enough' lies. Or if you have a bunch of people who interpreted the fatigue question as they'd had a really busy week (but in a good way, yet they'll be glad of a quite weekend) doing exciting positive things, and it is a FRiday lecture slot.

There are so many things here I don't know how anyone thinks they can interpret this stuff.
 
MrMagoo said:
Hopefully not whilst being an undergrad, but yeah, cant rule it out.
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Yes. But, look at the paper's title:
"Why are women more fatigued than men? The roles of stress, sleep, and repetitive negative thinking"

Not, 'Why do these Australian undergraduate student females report being more fatigued than their male classmates?'. No. These students get to stand for all women and men in the world of all ages, all reproductive stages, all occupation types. It's not very scientific.

If I was going to answer the question 'Why are Australian women more fatigued than Australian men?', I'd be looking at things like menstruation (and possible iron deficiency), dieting, pregnancy, breast-feeding, auto-immune disease. Reduced sleep time due to child care, and elder care. Possibly the mental exhaustion of spinning a lot of plates - running the household, caring for family, working, volunteering.

The extra time women are expected to put to looking well-groomed in the work force. And then the fact that women live longer, and so there are more elderly women than elderly men, and you get more fatigued as you age.

And yes, it fits with our stereotypes that women are more willing to report that they have a problem. So, women might, on average, be more willing to report pain. And perhaps also fatigue and stress.
 
Hutan said:
Not, 'Why do these Australian undergraduate student females report being more fatigued than their male classmates?'. No. These students get to stand for all women and men in the world of all ages, all reproductive stages, all occupation types. It's not very scientific.
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The part that bothers me is they didn't bother to actually ask the women in the study what they thought was the cause as the first phase and then base any subsequent experimental design based on that.

But no, they came up with the hypothesis without talking to actual people, generated an uninspired methodology (a bunch of generic scales) and think they're doing something useful.
 
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