Testosterone, Social Class, and Antisocial Behavior in a Sample of 4,462 Men

Abstract

Two hypotheses have been offered to explain the relation between testosterone and antisocial behavior in delinquent and criminal populations. One is that testosterone leads directly to antisocial behavior. The other is that a constellation of dominance, competitiveness, and sensation seeking associated with testosterone leads to either antisocial or prosocial behavior, depending upon an individual's resources and background. Analysis of archival data from 4,462 U.S. military veterans supported the first hypothesis: Testosterone was correlated with a variety of antisocial behaviors among all individuals. However, socioeconomic status (SES) proved to be a moderating variable, with weaker testosterone-behavior relationships among high SES subjects.

Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males

“…Although we did not measure the behavioral or physical pathways linking T with mating success in this analysis, T has previously been shown to bolster traits related to mating effort and attractiveness, such as musculature (1,28,29), motivation to win during competition (30), and pursuit of social dominance (2,31). Men with higher T have also been shown to have physical attributes deemed attractive by females and to have more recent and lifetime sexual partners (32)(33)(34). Although families traditionally played a primary role in arranging courtship and marriage in the Philippines, courting in recent decades has gradually moved toward males and females meeting independent of familial control (35).…”

“…Although helpful in securing mates, many T-stimulated behaviors may conflict with partnership stability and parenting (4,33). Indeed, men with higher T have been shown to be more likely to have marital problems and to be divorced (4,18), whereas men with lower T have been found to spend more time with their wives (21).…”

“…Our findings suggest that fathers are likely exposed to lower levels of T throughout much of their prime reproductive years, which could contribute to some of these health differentials. For instance, high T may increase risk for prostate cancer and adverse cholesterol profiles, and high T has also been linked to risk-taking behaviors that can affect men's health, such as drug and alcohol use and promiscuity (33,59,60). Our finding that men who end up as fathers tend to have higher T to begin with also suggests that some of the benefits of low T among fathers could be offset by higher T exposure among these men before becoming fathers, which could hinder efforts to identify the health impacts of being a partnered father.…”

Testosterone and Reconciliation Among Women: After-Competition Testosterone Predicts Prosocial Attitudes Towards Opponents

“…Although, both men and women use prosocial strategies to attain status (Anderson and Kilduff 2009;Cheng et al 2012;Hawley 1999), studies that demonstrate a positive relationship between T and antisocial behavior have been mostly conducted with men (e.g. Dabbs and Morris 1990;for review, Archer 2006) and studies that demonstrate a positive relationship between T and prosocial behavior have been mostly conducted with women (e.g., Boskem et al 2013;Eisenegger et al 2010;van Honk et al 2012) -a bias that may inappropriately lead researchers to predict a sex difference. The present study was conducted with women.…”

“…Taken together, these studies suggest that, at least in certain contexts, T influences prosocial behavior in women. For men, although some studies have found a link between T administration and behaviors such as reduced lying (Wibral et al 2012), there is less empirical evidence to support a hypothesized relationship between T and prosocial behavior (e.g., Dabbs and Morris 1990).…”