Why are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria? By Roger Bartholomew. From 2017.

It sounds sexist, and it’s sure to raise the ire of some feminists, but the literature does not lie. Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited strange behaviors, from headaches and fainting spells to twitching, shaking and trance states.

But whether it’s an outbreak of spirit possession at a shoe factory in Malaysia, a collapsing marching band at a school gala in England or a twitching epidemic in a Louisiana high school, the pattern is invariably the same.

Most, and often all of those affected, are females. In fact, of the 2,000+ cases in my files which date back to 1566, this pattern holds true over ninety-nine percent of the time. …

Mass hysteria is not a mental disorder – it’s a collective stress response that unfortunately has a stigma attached to it. …

The diagnosis of hysteria was once used by the male-dominated medical profession to reinforce the notion that females are emotionally unstable. The issue of hysteria is still a sensitive one. Just ask any feminist scholar in the heat of an impassioned debate, to “dial down the hysterics,” and see what happens! …

Canadian psychiatrist Francois Sirois believes the answer lies not in society’s treatment of females, but their biology. He analyzed 45 school outbreaks from around the world, and found that girls near puberty are most frequently affected. Sirois observes that outbreaks in Western schools, affect girls at about the same rate as those in other parts of the world, despite the social conditions being fairly uniform for both sexes.