Understanding these dynamics sheds light on men’s overall well-being and provides insights into optimizing hormone health through social engagement. The intricate relationship between social experiences and hormonal health has fascinated researchers for decades. Human evolution also has much to tell us about why men are so focused on status, and why the status response is so ingrained in both our physiology and neurology in the first place. PsyPost is a psychology and neuroscience news website dedicated to reporting the latest research on human behavior, cognition, and society. The study, "Testosterone Administration Increases the Computational Impact of Social Evaluation on the Updating of State Self-Esteem," was authored by Jixin Long, Junsong Lu, Yang Hu, Philippe N. Tobler, and Yin Wu. It could also investigate whether similar effects occur with other hormones or in response to different kinds of feedback, such as praise from peers or criticism from authority figures. All participants were young men, so it’s unclear whether the findings would generalize to women or to older adults. In fact, several studies have shown that when men (and women, too) are injected with testosterone, they become much more cooperative and altruistic in games that require cooperation and altruism than folks who didn’t receive the T injections. As we discussed last time, true alpha males frequently exhibit these traits, and that’s not a coincidence. The low T levels that result are what can cause men to lash out; remember, it’s low T men who are most prone to showy displays of aggression. Yet not only do our T levels fall when we experience status defeat, our cortisol (the stress hormone) rises at the same time. These fluctuations in testosterone only occur whenever the status competition is relevant to a person’s sense of self. Research has shown that right before high-profile chess matches, grandmasters will have a spike in their testosterone levels. The hormone doesn’t just raise or lower self-esteem—it actually changes how much social evaluation influences a person’s moment-to-moment feelings of self-worth. By actively shaping social interactions, individuals can create an environment that naturally supports hormonal health. Personality traits influence testosterone responses to social interactions.
