Testosterone, Aggression, Mates and Money

Posted on July 7, 2007 by


There’s evidence in humans that, just as in animals, testosterone is responsive to male-male competition. From what researchers can tell, testosterone is generated to prepare the body to respond to competition and/or challenges to one’s status. Any stimulus or event which signals either of these things can trigger an increase in testosterone levels.

Testosterone and Family Living
However, married men who spend time with their wives and kids have lower testosterone levels than bachelors. This 2002 discovery suggests that having less of the hormone could play a part in encouraging men to devote their energies to the family rather than looking for another partner. It suggests that lower testosterone makes dads less likely to stray, and encourages them to be true to their wives and spend time with their families. In turn, being around the family may lower testosterone, creating a continuous feedback loop. [Journal reference: Evolution and Human Behavior vol 23, p 193]

Testosterone and Violence
It’s commonly assumed that testosterone, that stereotypically male hormone, is intimately tied to violence. The evidence is all around us: weight lifters who overdose on anabolic steroids experience “roid rage,” and castration—the removal of the source of testosterone—has been a staple of animal husbandry for centuries.

In the short-term, testosterone helps make both males and females bigger, stronger and more energetic, all of which would be useful for winning a physical or even mental contest. Testosterone is also responsible for libido in both sexes, and if researchers are correct, it powers our drive for social dominance, which is one way that humans decide who gets to mate with whom.

We assume testosterone is intimately tied to violence but, is it true?

If you give a normal man a shot of testosterone, will he turn into the Incredible Hulk? And do violent men have higher levels of testosterone than their more docile peers? …

“What psychologists and psychiatrists say is that testosterone has a facilitative effect on aggression,” comments Melvin Konner, an anthropologist at Emory University and author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. “You don’t have a push-pull, click-click relationship where you inject testosterone and get aggressiveness.”

Castration experiments demonstrate that testosterone is necessary for violence, but other research has shown that testosterone is not, on its own, sufficient. In this way, testosterone is less a perpetrator and more an accomplice—one that’s sometimes not too far from the scene of the crime.

For example: regardless of their gender, the most violent prisoners have higher levels of testosterone than their less violent peers. Yet scientists hypothesize that this violence is just one manifestation of the much more biologically and reproductively salient goal of dominance.

Testosterone and Money
Testosterone may play a much stronger part in business interactions than previously thought, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University. As the New Scientist reports, the study suggests men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to refuse free money with no strings attached than other men.

Conclusion
No one really knows the answer, but a growing body of evidence suggests that testosterone is as much the result of violence as its cause. Both winning an athletic game and beating an opponent at chess can boost testosterone levels. But losing a competition, growing old and becoming obese all reduce levels of testosterone.

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