Social closeness increases salivary progesterone in humans

Brown, Stephanie L.; Fredrickson, Barbara L.; Wirth, Mary J.; Poulin, Michael J.; Meier, Elizabeth A.; Heaphy, Emily; Cohen, Michael D.; Schultheiss, Oliver C.

doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2009.03.022

Cited by 131 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In a repeated-measures study of women, Miller (2011) found that attention to social stimuli both increased during the high-progesterone phase of the menstrual cycle and was correlated with salivary progesterone. Brown et al (2009) found that women engaging in a task promoting social closeness showed increases in progesterone, and the extent of this increase predicted altruistic motivation in participants towards their task partner one week later. In both men and women, following the experience of experimental social rejection, progesterone increased when participants were told that they would have an opportunity to affiliate with others (Maner, Miller, Schmidt, & Eckel, 2010).…”

Section: Progesteronementioning

confidence: 93%

Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Motivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming

2014

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The frequency of homoerotic behavior among individuals who do not identify as having an exclusively homosexual sexual orientation suggests that such behavior potentially has adaptive value. Here we define homoerotic behavior as intimate erotic contact between members of the same sex and affiliation as the motivation to make and maintain social bonds. Among both male and female nonhuman primates affiliation is one of the main drivers of homoerotic behavior.Correspondingly, in humans, both across cultures and across historical periods, homoerotic behavior appears to play a role in promoting social bonds. However, to date, the affiliation explanation of human homoerotic behavior has not been adequately tested experimentally. We developed a measure of homoerotic motivation with a sample of 244 men and women. Next, we found that, in women (n= 92), homoerotic motivation was positively associated with progesterone, a hormone that has been shown to promote affiliative bonding. Lastly, we explored the effects of affiliative contexts on homoerotic motivation in men (n=59), finding that men in an affiliative priming condition were more likely to endorse engaging in homoerotic behavior compared to those primed with neutral or sexual concepts, and this effect was more pronounced in men with high progesterone. These findings constitute the first experimental support for the affiliation account of the evolution of homoerotic motivation in humans.

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Section: Progesteronementioning

confidence: 93%

Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Motivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming

2014

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“…In addition to cortisol, there is a growing body of literature linking progesterone levels/responses to both stress and to affiliation and rejection ( Brown et al , 2009; Childs et al , 2010; Gettler et al , 2013; Maner et al , 2010; Schultheiss et al , 2003; Schultheiss et al , 2004; Wirth & Schultheiss, 2006; Wirth et al , 2007; Wirth, 2011). Progesterone is not only a gonadal hormone, but is also produced in the adrenal glands, and progesterone levels increase in response to pharmacological stimulation of the HPA axis ( Genazzani et al , 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress, rejection, and hormones: Cortisol and progesterone reactivity to laboratory speech and rejection tasks in women and men

Gaffey

Wirth

2014

F1000Res

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Stress and social rejection have important impacts on health. Among the mechanisms implicated are hormonal systems such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which produces cortisol in humans. Current research employs speech stressors and social rejection stressors to understand hormonal responses in a laboratory setting. However, it is not clear whether social rejection stressors elicit hormonal reactivity. In addition to cortisol, progesterone has been highlighted as a potential stress- and affiliation-related hormone in humans. In the present study, 131 participants (70 men and 61 women) were randomly assigned to be exposed to one of four conditions: standardized speech stressor; speech control; social rejection task; or a control (inclusion) version of the social rejection task. Saliva samples were collected throughout the study to measure cortisol and progesterone. As hypothesized, we found the expected increase in cortisol in the speech stressor, and we also found that the social rejection task did not increase cortisol, underscoring the divergence between unpleasant experiences and HPA axis activity. However, we did not find evidence for progesterone increase either during the speech- or social rejection tasks. Compared with past studies on progesterone and stress in humans, the present findings present a mixed picture. Future work is needed to delineate the contexts and types of manipulations which lead to progesterone increases in humans.

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“…Study 1 revealed that only in the agency vision condition were increases in power motive imagery accompanied by increases in testosterone, a hormonal indicator of implicit power motivation (e.g., Brown et al, 2009;Schultheiss et al, 2004;Wirth & Schultheiss, 2004). In the affiliation vision condition, changes in affiliation imagery were associated with progesterone changes, a hormonal indicator of implicit affiliation motivation (Schultheiss et al, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…shown that the arousal of n Power (e.g., via winning a competition or watching power-thematic film segments) is associated with increasing salivary testosterone levels, whereas the arousal of n Affiliation (e.g., via film affiliation-thematic segments or via social closeness) is associated with increasing salivary progesterone levels (Brown, Fredrickson, Wirth, et al, 2009;Schultheiss et al, 2004;Wirth & Schultheiss, 2006). Therefore, we hypothesized that in the affiliation vision condition, changes in affiliation imagery would be associated with changes in salivary progesterone, while in the agency vision condition, changes in power 3 imagery would be associated with changes in salivary testosterone.…”

Section: Progesteronementioning

confidence: 98%

The motivating power of visions: Exploring the mechanisms

Rawolle¹

2010

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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DedicationTo my mom and my dad, who fostered my curiosity about life, and who taught me to turn adversity into challenge. STUDY 3-EFFECTS OF AFFILIATION AND POWER VISIONS ON ALPHA-AMYLASE, COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR IN PRISONER'S DILEMMAS, AND SELF-REPORTED AFFECT 58 Method 61 Results 67 Discussion 796 General discussion 81 Limitations and future directions 85 Conclusion 887 changes in achievement imagery (i.e., hope for success imagery), affective arousal (i.e., tense arousal, energetic arousal, and hedonic tone), and performance (i.e., reaction time and error rate) on a mental concentration task. As predicted, the achievement vision increased hope for success imagery and tense arousal, and reduced reaction times and error rates.Furthermore, the strength of the person's pre-vision hope for success moderated the influence of achievement vision on energetic arousal and reaction time. Study 3 focused on the domains of affiliation and power, thereby contrasting two motive domains that are known to have opposite effects on the following motivation indicators: changes in salivary alphaamylase, affective arousal, and cooperation behavior in a prisoner's dilemma.As predicted, the affiliation vision promoted hedonic tone, especially in participants high in the need for affiliation, whereas the power vision promoted tense arousal and interacted with pre-vision need for power to increase energetic arousal. Moreover, the power vision increased the alphaamylase level and exploitative behavior, particularly in participants high in the need for power. In contrast, the affiliation vision increased cooperation behavior, especially in predominantly affiliation-motivated participants. In sum, the present research provides the first empirical evidence that visions are motivationally effective by arousing implicit motives.

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Social closeness increases salivary progesterone in humans

Cited by 131 publications

References 24 publications

Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Motivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming

Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Motivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming

Stress, rejection, and hormones: Cortisol and progesterone reactivity to laboratory speech and rejection tasks in women and men

The motivating power of visions: Exploring the mechanisms

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