Your Mother: Call Her

Feeling anxious? Dial up Mom, says Science: A recent study shows that girls who were able to chat with their mothers on the phone before a stressful event were beneficiaries of similar levels of the social bonding hormone oxytocin as being in actual physical contact with mommy.

Leslie Seltzer, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research, said: “The children who got to interact with their mothers had virtually the same hormonal response, whether they interacted in person or over the phone.

“It was understood that oxytocin release in the context of social bonding usually required physical contact. But it’s clear from these results that a mother’s voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if they’re not standing there.”

The researchers chose to conduct the study on girls “because oxytocin responses are stronger in females than in males,” and also because the guys kept saying that they would make the call “just as soon as they unlocked the next level” on the videogame they were playing but never got around to picking up the phone.