Testosterone has been associated with a willingness to take risks, engage in aggression, and over estimate one's chances of success. Sustaining high level of testosterone has health costs, and is one of the reasons why men live shorter lives than women everywhere. Male testosterone suffers two big drops over the life course, once after marriage and once after children start arriving. Apply the logic of natural selection to explain these drops.
a) Why might it be adaptive for testosterone to drop after each of these events?
b)How will this change males behavior in an adaptive way?
2 answers
After marriage and children, a man has responsibilities. He and his progeny can't afford for him to be unduly aggressive and take risks.
Your premises are folk-lore. I challenge you to present research to back your premises.
The drop in testosterone is noticable in men in the aging process, a great drop after castration or prostrate surgery, and during bouts of stress. If you equate marriage and children to stress, which it can be, then it will appear. But work stress or personal stress is much more common, and documented.
Now it is again some speculation why aging, or stress might have a "reproductive" or survival advantage for the reproductive unit (ie family). I know of no data on that. And I take issue with the idea that after marriage and children there is an evolutionary advantage for men to calm down, in evolution, survival of the family and pregnant partner may depend on the aggressive (defensive) responses of the male. But who knows.
I thought psychologists quit speculating 100 years ago, and sociologists took up that method. (Read Grin).
Sounds like an interesting object for a paper.
The drop in testosterone is noticable in men in the aging process, a great drop after castration or prostrate surgery, and during bouts of stress. If you equate marriage and children to stress, which it can be, then it will appear. But work stress or personal stress is much more common, and documented.
Now it is again some speculation why aging, or stress might have a "reproductive" or survival advantage for the reproductive unit (ie family). I know of no data on that. And I take issue with the idea that after marriage and children there is an evolutionary advantage for men to calm down, in evolution, survival of the family and pregnant partner may depend on the aggressive (defensive) responses of the male. But who knows.
I thought psychologists quit speculating 100 years ago, and sociologists took up that method. (Read Grin).
Sounds like an interesting object for a paper.
1 answer