Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Keywords

testosterone, in-groups, hormones, male behavior, challenge hypothesis

Journal/Book/Conference Title Title

Evolutionary Psychology

Volume

8

Issue

2

First Page

173

Last Page

188

Abstract

The current study investigated young men's testosterone level changes as a result of interacting with other men. Male participants (n = 84) were led to believe that a group they would be interacting with was either similar to them or not similar. The interaction was then one of two types: the other group members were inclusive, or the others excluded the participant during the group interaction. Participants provided saliva samples before and after the interaction. Results suggest that interacting with highly similar men increases circulating testosterone whereas interacting with highly dissimilar men actually lowers testosterone. The nature of the interaction was less important than similarity. Considering that testosterone surges may relate to attempts to gain status within one's group, the results are interpreted as consistent with viewing hormonal changes as a mechanism to alter current behavioral propensities in ways that are likely to be most adaptive. Exploratory analyses suggest a methodologically interesting suppressor effect of the self-report items in predicting testosterone changes.

Department

Department of Psychology

Comments

First published in Evolutionary Psychology, v.8 n.2 (2010), by Sage Journals. DOI: 10.1177/147470491000800203

Original Publication Date

2010

DOI of published version

10.1177/147470491000800203

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library

Copyright

©2010 M. Catherine DeSoto, Robert T. Hitlan, Rory-Sean S. Deol, and Derrick McAdams. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. (CC BY-NC 3.0).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Date Digital

2010

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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