Testosterone’s Role in Modulating Human Behaviors Relevant to Mating and Parenting

Available online 14 November 2023, 101112

Author links open overlay panel, Abstract

Testosterone (T) is linked to human mating and parenting. Here, we comprehensively reviewed evidence on whether, in men and women, 1) basal T levels are related to mating and parenting behaviors, 2) T responds to reproduction-relevant cues, 3) acute changes in T map onto subsequent mating and parenting behaviors, and 4) single-dose exogenous T administration causally affects mating and parenting behaviors. We examined whether the available evidence supports trade-off interpretations of T’s adaptive function whereby high T levels correspond to greater mating/reproductive effort and competition and low T levels to greater parenting effort and nurturance. We found mixed support for trade-off hypotheses, suggesting that T’s function in modulating human mating and parenting might be more nuanced and highly dependent on context and individual trait differences. Results were largely similar for men and women, although studies with women were scarcer than those with men for most behaviors we reviewed.

Section snippetsGeneral Introduction

The steroid hormone testosterone (T) is connected to human mating and parenting, an association that is intuitively known by the general public and widely researched by scientists in the field of human social neuroendocrinology. Empirical evidence has shown that T is crucial to the reproduction-related physiology and behavior of both women and men. For example, basal T levels are significantly correlated with behaviors like mate acquisition (e.g., Bozick, 2022) and parental status (e.g., Kuzawa

Basal T and human mating and parenting behavior

Even though there is no consensus on a formal definition of what basal, or baseline, T levels are, they are often thought of as T levels measured at rest. Researchers who aim to examine the relationship between basal T levels and human behavior usually collect a saliva or blood sample at the beginning of a study session, shortly after participants arrive at the study site and are given a chance to rest, and before any behavior of interest is measured (Panel A, Figure 1). The researchers then

T responses to cues of mating and parenting

In Section 2, we reviewed data showing that basal T levels might be linked to several reproduction-related behaviors (see Table 1). However, many reviews on T and human social behaviors have found evidence that basal T levels are only weakly associated with most social behaviors—changes in T in response to social cues are instead more reliably linked to social behaviors, at least in men (Archer, 2006, Geniole et al., 2020). In other words, acute changes in T in response to social cues can

T dynamics and mating and parenting behavior

As we mentioned at the start of Section 3, acute changes in T levels might play a more important role in modulating reproductive psychology and behavior than individual differences in basal T levels (e.g., Geniole & Carré, 2018). In that section, we found evidence that both men’s and women’s T responds to several reproduction-relevant cues, even if the magnitude and direction of the T changes are context-dependent and likely to be moderated by personality and biological traits. In this section,

Going beyond correlation: Exogenous T and mating and parenting behavior

Experimental manipulations of T concentrations are essential to understand whether T has causal effects on psychology and behavior. Researchers who are interested in examining the causal effects of acute changes in T levels on mating and parenting behaviors typically use single-dose T administration experiments to test their ideas, going beyond the correlational observations that we reviewed in Sections 2–4. The single T doses used in these experiments rapidly increase T concentrations to

General Discussion

In a comprehensive review of human social neuroendocrinology literature, we examined whether T is related to, and plays a role in modulating, human mating and parenting. We investigated whether basal T levels and acute changes in T levels in response to reproduction-relevant cues are correlated with mating and parenting behaviors, and whether a single dose of exogenous T can also causally affect these behaviors. For each behavior we considered, we reviewed whether the available evidence

Conclusions

Through a comprehensive review of the evidence on T’s role in modulating human mating and parenting, we found that T is linked to several mating and parenting behaviors. However, we did not find consistent support for trade-off explanations of T’s function, which propose that high T levels (or increases in T) correspond to mating, competition, and reproductive effort, and low T levels (or decreases in T) to parenting, nurturance, and maintenance. Overall, evidence suggests that T’s relation to

Uncited references

van Anders et al., 2007a, van Anders et al., 2007b.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

JMC is funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (RPGIN-2020-05120) and NSERC Accelerator Supplement (RGPAS-2020-00024).

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