Testosterone And Aggression Essay

Testosterone is produced by the testes of men and the ovaries of women, as well as the adrenal glands of both sexes. Correlational studies have found that higher testosterone is associated with more sexual activity, more alcohol, more aggression and more competitive ness amongst other social behaviours that humans participate in. However the investigation of testosterones influences on social behaviours has only really just begun and hence we do not know a lot about the definitive effects of testosterone.

One of the areas in which testosterone affects social situations, is through aggression. There has been a lot of research on this through the use of animals. For instance it has been found that in spotted hyenas; the androgen a female is exposed to before birth the more aggressive they would later be (Dloniak et al 2006). In more typical mammals, for instance mice or rats, decreasing the amount of testosterone through castration usually reduced the amount of aggressive behaviour shown through the amount of bite attacks initiated before and after castration (Wagner et al 1980). The link between testosterone and aggression seems to be extended throughout the animal kingdom. However research into testosterone and aggression in humans is a lot less clear. O’Connor et al (2004) found that increasing levels of testosterone in adult volunteers did not appear to increase aggression. This finding has been backed up by the finding that the amount of aggression stayed the same whilst males went through puberty (Archer, 2006). However a positive correlation has been found in humans between testosterone and aggressive behaviour. Dabbs & Hargrove (1997) studied 87 female inmates in a maximum security state prison. They used court records, pris...

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...nd therefore plays an important role in social status hierarchies. More recently studies have begun to test the causality of the link between social, emotional and economic interaction behaviour through testosterone administration. These studies have confirmed that testosterone is not a simple mediator of aggression; instead it has a more subtle and complex role in driving social behaviours. The exact effects of this are still not completely known as it is a very complex task to eliminate the confounding variables that affect the outcomes of the studies. However studies investigating the effects of testosterone are not easily done, as they are usually limited to correlational studies, for instance when investigating aggression, they look at plasma hormone levels and observed aggressive behaviours. This means that the causality in these studies remains very unclear.