Mythbuster: Testosterone and Aggression

[Feckless]

Is testosterone really the hormone of aggression? Perhaps not.

(c) 1995 Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co. (c) 1995 N.Y. Times News Service

WASHINGTON (Jun 20, 1995 - 08:54 EDT) -- Tired of hormone as cultural myth, as shorthand for swagger and machismo, ferocity and obnoxiousness, the bearskin beneath the three-piece suit?


Do the ubiquitous references to "testosterone poisoning" and "testosterone shock," to "testosterone-fueled heavy metal" and 'testosterone-crazed oppressors" make you feel a bit, well, testy?


Do you think it unfair to blame one lousy little chemical for war, dictatorships, crime, Genghis Khan, Gunga Din, Sly Stallone, the NRA, the NFL, Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf and the tendency to interrupt in the middle of a sentence?


Ready to give the so-called male hormone a break and retire all testosterone cliches with a single pound of Iron John's drum?


Retire away. As it turns out, testosterone may not be the dread "hormone of aggression" that researchers and the popular imagination have long had it. It may not be the substance that drives men to behave with quintessential guyness, to posture, push, yelp, belch, punch and play air-guitar.


If anything, this most freighted of hormones may be a source of very different sensations: calmness, happiness and friendliness, for example.
Friendliness???


Reporting in Washington last week at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, researchers said that it was a deficiency of testosterone, rather than its excess, that could lead to all the negative behaviors normally associated with the androgen.


Studying a group of 54 so-called hypogonadal men, who for a variety of reasons were low in testosterone, Dr. Christina Wang of the University of California in Los Angeles and her colleagues, found that before treatment, the men expressed a surprising suite of negative emotions.


They did not feel passive or depressed or timid, as standard ideas of testosterone deficiency might predict. Instead, they described feelings of edginess, anger, irritability. Aggression.


When the men were given testosterone replacement therapy, and were asked to complete questionnaires about their moods several times over the course of two months of treatment, their general sense of well-being improved markedly. Their anger and agitation decreased, their sense of optimism and friendliness heightened.


"Every parameter we looked at went in the same direction," Dr. Wang said. "The positive mood increased, the negative mood decreased."


Dr. Willis K. Samson, a professor and chairman of physiology at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, said, "Testosterone has been given such a negative knock. Work like this helps show the up side of this very important male hormone."


The commonly held belief that testosterone produces antisocial behavior "may be a misconception," he added.


Dr. Wang's work is in keeping with similar findings from other laboratories that question how relevant testosterone is to human aggression.
Some studies even indicate another, improbable source of aggression: estrogen. Yes, the gal hormone.


Other work presented at the meeting showed that when male mice were genetically deprived of their ability to respond to estrogen, they lost a lot of their natural aggressiveness, becoming much less likely to fight with other males or to display the general paranoia exhibited by ordinary male rodents.


Considered together, the new work underscores how primitive is scientists' understanding of the effects of hormones on human and even animal behavior.


[...]

So far, there have been no good, controlled studies seeking to evaluate the effect of giving excess testosterone to androgenically normal men. In lieu of such studies are recent experiments comparing the mood states of hypogonadal men before and after treatment, like Dr. Wang's work. One missing element of this report, however, is a conventional control group -- seeing what happens to men with low testosterone if they are given a dummy medication rather than real testosterone. Do they, too, feel happier and friendlier?


Such an experiment would be unethical, said Dr. Wang, because hypogonadal men who visit the clinic are ill and need treatment to restore muscle and bone mass and healthy cholesterol levels. Denying them testosterone would be like denying a diabetic insulin.


Offering a partial explanation, Bremner and his colleagues reported in the June 1994 issue of The Journal of Clinical and Endocrinological Metabolism their results of seeing what happens to healthy men when they are artificially and temporarily brought to a state of low testosterone.
Some of the subjects were immediately given testosterone replacement, while others received dummy medication.


The study was mainly intended to look at the effects of testosterone on libido, but the researchers noted that the men with a drug-induced state of hypogonadism reported increased levels of aggression.


"Perhaps it made them uncomfortable or unhappy in a variety of ways, and that unhappiness registered itself as a high score on the aggression scale," Bremner said.


What Bremner's study and other reports found that does conform to stereotypical notions of the male hormone is that testosterone is profoundly important to a man's sex drive, though not to his mechanical abilities in bed.


Hypogonadal men report a sharp drop in sexual interest, which testosterone replacement quickly restores. The androgen may also play a role in female sexuality, and a growing number of menopausal women are asking that testosterone be added to their hormone replacement regimen to restore a lackluster libido. But the data linking sex drive and testosterone in women are fiercely debated.


Testosterone therapy also appears to give men and women more energy, vim, the desire to leap out of bed in the morning and embrace the demands of the day with can-do concentration. That zestiness is not the same as aggression, which if anything is often accompanied by poor concentration and underlying malaise, researchers said.


If testosterone qua testosterone is not the demonic potion of legend, its yangian counterpart, estrogen, may not be so innocent.


Reporting last month at the annual meeting of the American Pediatric Society, Dr. Jordan W. Finkelstein, Dr. Howard Kulin and their colleagues at Penn State University said that they compared the effects of giving estrogen therapy to girls who suffered from delayed onset of puberty with that of giving testosterone to boys who likewise were late in sexually maturing.


The girls showed earlier and larger increases in aggression than did the boys, until the boys received the last and highest dose of testosterone.
The researchers propose that for both sexes, the cause of the teen-age spike in aggressive and very likely insolent behavior is estrogen.

As scientists only lately are beginning to appreciate, most of the effect of testosterone on the brain is paradoxically estrogenic in nature.


That is because the brain is rich in the enzyme aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. The newly transformed hormone then acts on the nerve cells of the brain through estrogen receptors, proteins designed specifically to link up with it.


A male's brain also has some receptors for testosterone, but they are far fewer in number or distribution, and the converting enzyme aromatase does not leave much testosterone around to hook up with these androgen receptors anyway.


Thus, in both boys and girls, as they reach adolescence and their respective sex hormones surge, the influence of either hormone on the brain and behavior probably works its dark art as estrogen.


In the Pennsylvania study, the girls may have had a jump on aggressive behavior over the boys because they were given direct injections of estrogen and therefore their brains did not need to go through the work of converting testosterone to estrogen.


[...]

Until then, perhaps it is time for a new hormonal cliche to explain aggression. How about this: The estrogen was so thick you couldn't beat it down with a rolling pin.

Testosterone Study

[gaynorbarry]

there have been a number of studies which makes similiar concludions (I believe they have been posted here). Which indicates the possibility that aggressive males may in fact be acting more like women who lack testesterone, who traditionally (not so these days) had greater social constraints and less muscle power to stop them acting out their aggresion in a physical manner.

[Marx]

(I believe they have been posted here)

Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if we had a specific area to post nothing but studies, where they could all be arranged in order.

Gee, if only we had such a section.

[Feckless]

Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if we had a specific area to post nothing but studies, where they could all be arranged in order.

Gee, if only we had such a section.

Excactly....couldn´t you simply create such an area? Sheesh Marx!

(ducks and runs away fast)

[christianj]

Call in the LINKMEISTER

[paul parmenter]

These findings are wholly consistent with what the enlightened know of the true state of society. Females are consistently the more angry, dissatisfied and violently aggressive sex.

[brian44]

These findings are wholly consistent with what the enlightened know of the true state of society. Females are consistently the more angry, dissatisfied and violently aggressive sex.

Typical Friday and Saturday nights near where I live would totally back that up. Come to think of it, my ex-wife's left hook would back that up even more

[Percy]

Injections of Common Decency (or Ouzo ) might do some good, too.

[lolintertubes]

Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if we had a specific area to post nothing but studies, where they could all be arranged in order.

Gee, if only we had such a section.

My sarcasm detector just exploded in my face. Thanks Karl you owe me a new 'un.

[Marx]

Excactly....couldn´t you simply create such an area? Sheesh Marx!

(ducks and runs away fast)

My sarcasm detector just exploded in my face. Thanks Karl you owe me a new 'un.

You're both quite, quite welcome

[the Infidel]

Maybe not... NYTimes

Here is another study of how testosterone might actually be positive and beneficial to society and not the "evil" that the misandric West holds it to be...

As it turns out, testosterone may not be the dread "hormone of aggression" that researchers and the popular imagination have long had it. It may not be the substance that drives men to behave with quintessential guyness, to posture, push, yelp, belch, punch and play air-guitar.

If anything, this most freighted of hormones may be a source of very different sensations: calmness, happiness and friendliness, for example.

When the men were given testosterone replacement therapy, and were asked to complete questionnaires about their moods several times over the course of two months of treatment, their general sense of well-being improved markedly. Their anger and agitation decreased, their sense of optimism and friendliness heightened.

"Every parameter we looked at went in the same direction," Dr. Wang said. "The positive mood increased, the negative mood decreased."

Dr. Willis K. Samson, a professor and chairman of physiology at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, said, "Testosterone has been given such a negative knock. Work like this helps show the up side of this very important male hormone."

This was the LEAST shocking result:

studies even indicate another, improbable source of aggression: estrogen. Yes, the gal hormone.

The next tidbit gives their hand away:

some studies of prison populations, wife beaters or other groups considered hostile and foul-tempered, suggest that aggressive men have comparatively high testosterone levels.

So they study already dysfunctional people and then try to draw ANY form of conclusion from it? Wow, "science!"

This next part is fascinating in light of the history of human conquest. Mongols, the Muslims, Athenians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, and even the Israelites and others out of the Old Testament all had the tendency to kill all the men and try to either enslave or integrate the remaining female population. Well...

The centrality of the brain's estrogen receptors to aggressive behavior was highlighted by a new study of receptor-deficient mice, presented at the endocrine meeting.

Dr. Donald W. Pfaff of Rockefeller University in New York, his student, Sonoko Ogawa, and Dr. Kenneth S. Korach of the National Institutes of Health, have analyzed male mice genetically altered so that they lack nearly all estrogen receptors.

Testing the male mice in a variety of circumstances, the researchers determined that they were unusual in many ways. Normal male mice do not tend to wander across open fields as females do, but prefer to skulk along borders; males without estrogen receptors generally took the female attitude, and freely walked where they pleased.

Ordinary males respond to intruders in their territory with violent attacks, chasing, biting and generally seeking to harm the interloper. These males react to newcomers tepidly if at all, perhaps nipping if the animal comes too close, but never attacking the stranger outright.

The point being if you relate this to the current explosion (forgive the choice of that word) in Islamic converts in the West, it dovetails perfectly. Christianity and Western society in general has become so deeply anti-male that an "interloper" that seeks to fundamentally alter our way of life is getting "tepid" reactions.

The researchers propose that for both sexes, the cause of the teen-age spike in aggressive and very likely insolent behavior is estrogen.

As scientists only lately are beginning to appreciate, most of the effect of testosterone on the brain is paradoxically estrogenic in nature.

That part was interesting to me because of the very strong, established correlation between youth delinquency, drug use, violence, etc with an absent or weak father.

Fascinating...

[Marx]

Excellent post, thank you for sharing this ... it will no doubt piss feminists off no-end that half the literature on 'testosterone poisoned menz' has suddenly been debunked.

[chevalier]

That part was interesting to me because of the very strong, established correlation between youth delinquency, drug use, violence, etc with an absent or weak father.

I suspect the two are not mutally exclusive.


For instance physical or emotional trauma can cause the brains chemestry to change and result in depression.

So it is not out of the realm of possibility that fatherlessness could be connected to higher estrogen production and increased aggression.

[Marx]

Just realised this was posted a while back by Feckless, so have merged threads... This is why looking at the 'similar threads' function (when posting new threads) is so useful

[Marx]

I've also asked feminists how they feel about it...

Now that feminist lies, such as 'testosterone poisoning' are debunked?

... and it turns out the oestrogen is found to be a cause for unfair play - should MRA's treat women the same way feminists treated men?

You know, start chanting and writing articles for broadsheet & tabloids, promoting a hateful view that women (as a whole) are poisoned by oestrogen?

I mean, thats' what feminism did to men, went waffling on with their hateful view that men (as a whole) are poisoned by testosterone...

Or do you think MRA's are better than that?

Who's really the sexists ...?

One old timer feminist from Y!A retorted:

I'm a feminist, and since I have no clue what the f*ck you're talking about,
I'm pretty damned sure it's not a "feminist" idea.

"Feminist" man-hate:
About as much sense as a fish-eating "vegetarian"

Given her denial that feminism inspired such a term, I pointed her to the fact that the term 'testosterone poisoning' was added to the feminist dictionary back in 1985 and to my knowledge, remains there to this day.