Importantly, rather than promoting aggression, testosterone promotes whatever is needed to maintain status when challenged. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Success in everything from athletics to chess to the stock market boosts testosterone levels.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
Individual differences in testosterone level predict very little about differences in aggression. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Testosterone makes people cocky, egocentric, and narcissistic.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
Hormones influencing the sensitivity of the person to environmental stimuli. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“This context dependency means that rather than causing X, testosterone amplifies the power of something else to cause X.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“testosterone’s actions are contingent and amplifying, exacerbating preexisting tendencies toward aggression rather than creating aggression out of thin air.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“testosterone increases the excitability of amygdaloid neurons, and glucocorticoids decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“In our world riddled with male violence, the problem isn’t that testosterone can increase levels of aggression. The problem is the frequency… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“When a rat wins a fight, the number of testosterone receptors increases in the ventral tegmentum and accumbens, increasing sensitivity to the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“In a typical study, higher testosterone levels would be observed in those male prisoners with higher rates of aggression. But being aggressive… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
The problem isn't testosterone and aggression; it's how often we reward aggression. And we do: We give medals to masters of the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Males who do extreme amounts of exercise, such as professional soccer players and runners who cover more than 40 or 50 miles… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Over the course of minutes to hours, hormonal effects are predominantly contingent and facilitative. Hormones don’t determine, command, cause, or invent behaviors.… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Thus, shorter refractory periods mean a higher rate of action potentials. So is testosterone causing action potentials in these neurons? No. It’s… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“When testosterone rises after a challenge, it doesn't prompt aggression. Instead it prompts whatever behaviors are needed to maintain status. This changes… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Testosterone also increases confidence and optimism, while decreasing fear and anxiety.5 This explains the “winner” effect in lab animals, where winning a… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Finally, for the same criminal conviction, the more stereotypically Af-rican a black individual’s facial features, the longer the sentence.15 In contrast, juries view black… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone increases anxiety—you… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“The subject of one experiment is a rat that receives mild electric shocks (roughly equivalent to the static shock you might get from scuffing… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“No brain region is an island, and the formation of circuits connecting far-flung brain regions is crucial—how else can the frontal cortex use its… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger or not.… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
