James M. Dabbs - US grants

This project represents phase one in a planned series of studies relating saliva testosterone concentrations to antisocial and violent behavior. To date, studies relating plasma testosterone to aggressive, impulsive, and antisocial behavior have produce conflicting results and suggest the effects of testosterone may be very specific. For example, different studies show serum testosterone related to provoked but not unprovoked aggression and to adolescent but not adult criminal history. There is little information from these studies on how much testosterone changes over time, what causes the changes, how they affect aggressive behavior, and how they might make it difficult to characterize a person as chronically high or low in testosterone. The present project explores the utility of saliva rather than serum measures of testosterone in future research on antisocial and violent behavior. Saliva provides a virtually pure measure of "free" testosterone, while serum provides a measure of free plus bound. Saliva can be collected easily with no medical assistance, making it possible to study large numbers of subjects under diverse field conditions and to take repeated measures over periods of time ranging from minutes to years. Preliminary studies show saliva testosterone related to criminal violence in both male and female prison inmates and to personality measures in college students. This project will examine cyclicity (circadian, menstrual, circannual) in order to control for error that cycles can introduce into measures of individual differences in testosterone and to determine the best time of day to obtain measures. It will also examine changes in testosterone due to random variation, life events over a six month period, and experimental testing conditions. Preliminary correlative data on delinquent behavior will be collected, but the focus will be upon developing protocols for measuring individual differences in saliva testosterone.

Prior research has found testosterone related to individual differences in aggression, dominance, and criminal violence. This research will gather detailed information on testosterone and antisocial behavior in delinquent and normal populations. It will also test a biosocial model that predicts antisocial behavior as a joint function of high testosterone and low social control. Antisocial behavior ranges in severity from unfriendly facial expressions to unstable personal relationships to criminal violence. All these behaviors are correlated with testosterone, but the correlations are low, and large numbers of subjects are needed to have enough statistical power to determine their exact size. Other factors are needed to explain why high testosterone individuals are not always violent. The model proposed here treats social control forces, embodied in attachment to family and community, as restraining the more violent effects of testosterone. Most high testosterone individuals engage in mild antisocial behavior, especially when frustrated or challenged, but are violent only when social controls are weak. The testosterone-violence correlation should be strongest when social control is weakest, as when subjects do not identify with family and community or when they are young, mentally incompetent, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The research will employ salivary testosterone measurements and behavioral observations of prison inmates, college students, military veterans, children, and alcoholics. The findings will help to specify exactly what antisocial behaviors are related to testosterone, how strong the relationship is, and what other factors serve to increase or decrease the size of the relationship.

Prior research on testosterone has focused on delinquent and antisocial behavior. Little attention has been directed toward prosocial behavior, or toward variables that mediate and moderate the effects of testosterone. The proposed research will cover four areas. First, it will examine physical individual difference characteristics as they are correlated with testosterone level. Second, it will examine cognitive factors that are correlated with differences in testosterone level, using neuropsychological tests and pupillary response measures. Third, it will examine behavioral differences between groups of high and low testosterone individuals, focusing upon success in select occupations. And fourth, it will examine the role of testosterone in an assertive, out-going, and risky kind of behavior called "heroic altruism." The work is guided by an evolutionary model, which holds that testosterone is selected to produce strength, persistence, focused attention, a combative frame of mind, a preference for action over thought, a confident and intimidating, manner, and sexual activity. These characteristics sum together to define dominance, which leads to success in agonistic encounters and to reproductive success. Personal experiences and social control forces moderate the effects of testosterone, allowing it to lead to delinquency, restraining it, or converting it into prosocial behavior. Many high testosterone people are aggressive and violent, but some devote their lives to helping others. To understand how this can be, we need to look at the most basic effects of testosterone. Testosterone brings strength, activity, a willingness to fight, and a confident manner. These can be used to hurt other people or to help them. The present project will gather detailed information on the personality and ways of thinking of high testosterone people. It will also study how family values and community pressures lead these people to use testosterone in good or bad ways. The results should help us understand what causes violence and how we can contol and limit it.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prior research indicates that testosterone is related both to antisocial behavior and to behavior that is neutral or even prosocial. The moderator variables that might lead testosterone to have either positive or negative effects have not been identified, and conditions that predict whether testosterone will be associated with prosocial or antisocial behavior remain unclear. There is also a more basic question of whether testosterone has any causal effects on behavior at all, or whether it simply varies in response to behavioral experiences. The proposed research will examine short-term effects of testosterone and consider how these might lead to different long-term effects in different individuals. The model to be tested regards testosterone as a source of transient arousal and focused attention that, depending upon an individual's interests and motives, lead toward actions that may be either prosocial or antisocial. Successful action that is gratifying to the individual will increase testosterone, and failed action that is discouraging will decrease testosterone, and these changes in turn will modify the impetus toward preferred behavior. In summary, testosterone will potentiate action that is congruent with an individual's personality and goals, and the consequences of this action will feed back to affect testosterone level, affecting further action. The model will be tested first with four experiments and a correlational study. The experiments will test the hypotheses that transdermal testosterone treatments will (a) increase boldness and feelings of dominance; (b) increase engagement with the environment and participation in social activity; (c) increase persistence and focused attention in performing laboratory tasks; and (d) increase favorability of implicit attitudes toward activity, competition, and aggression. The correlational study will examine dominance and nurturance as moderator variables that guide the effects of testosterone toward antisocial or prosocial behavior among college students.