Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (17 page)

Read Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior Online

Authors: James McBride Dabbs,Mary Godwin Dabbs

Tags: #test

BOOK: Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior
8.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 58
the point that she no longer needed a calculator to keep track of prices in her shop.
38
At the atomic weapons center in Los Alamos in 1945, a job came up that called for a combination of mechanical aptitude, fine motor skill, and computational ability. A group of women, many of them wives of atomic scientists, were selected for the job. They sat in a room full of mechanical desktop calculators, working together to solve thousands of equations to predict what would happen during each millisecond of the explosion of an atomic bomb. They were the world's first supercomputer. The women were more accurate and faster than men would have been.
39
Although men have a handicap when it comes to fine hand movements and computational skills, they have the physical strength and frame of mind that makes heavy-duty mechanical work especially attractive. Evidence from research on animals and diverse human populations, ranging from children to adult transsexuals, indicates that testosterone contributes to this frame of mind.
The cognitive style and spatial abilities associated with the masculine frame of mind evolved along with a compatible set of psychological, physical, and behavioral traits that aided our prehistoric hunting and fighting ancestors in their struggle for survival. Those who survived and passed along their genes were strong, dominant, and full of libido.
Strength, Dominance, and Sex
With all the recent scandals about athletes who enhance strength training with illegal doses of testosteronelike anabolic steroids, it should come as no surprise to anyone that testosterone builds muscle.
40
Track fans also know that testosterone is more helpful to sprinters than to marathon runners. That is because testosterone has its largest effect on the fast-twitch muscle fibers needed for rapid movement and peak performance.
Along with strength and energy, testosterone promotes an interest in sex. While men still sometimes fight over women, many of our evolutionary forebears, whose genes we carry, made a habit of it. Those who evolved with the optimal amount of testosterone had an advantage over other primitive men. They had the focus, motivation, and muscle they
 
Page 59
needed to win fights and mates. The optimal amount of testosterone is not necessarily the largest amount. Men with too narrow a focus, too much motivation toward fighting, or too much muscle might not notice danger or be agile enough to run from it if need be. While evolution has resulted in increased testosterone levels in males, it has also exerted a moderating effect that holds down extreme levels. The moderating effect may be more important than ever for contemporary men who must compete in a job market that increasingly values education and verbal skill over brute strength.
The optimal level of testosterone helps balance focus with vigilance, motivation with prudence, and muscle with agility. Thoughts trigger glands to release testosterone, which further activates the brain and triggers new thoughts. The mind gives form to the behavioral effects of testosterone on the brain. In
Genes, Mind, and Culture
, the sociobiologist Edward Wilson describes the mind as a link between biology and culture.
41
Biology gives a background of vitality to our decisions, but it cannot determine exactly why we act as we do or why we have developed the culture in which we live. Testosterone is part of the link between biological origins and social behavior, but it is our minds that filter our experience and allow us to control our behavior, keeping the peace between biological needs and daily experience.
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said, "Our brains are identical to the ones which emerged from Africa 100,000 years ago. You take a cave man, shave him, give him a 3-piece suit, and put him on Wall St., and he looks like all the other barbarians on Wall St. Our brains haven't changed at all in the last 100,000 years. The only difference is that these cave men now have nuclear weapons."
42
What Kaku said is close enough to the literal truth to warn us that the mind, as Wilson defines it, must be nurtured in order to meet the challenge of adapting the caveman brain to civilization. If the mind prevails, then even in an age of technology and overpopulation it should be possible to channel the energy and focus that comes with testosterone in useful ways.
Fortunately, high-testosterone individuals are influenced by good parenting, education, and the social restraints of civilization. Suzanne Womack, a student of mine who has thought at length about high-testosterone men, might say that for them channeling the energy and focus of testosterone minus its aggression will take some doing on the
 
Page 60
part of civilizing institutions. She believes high-testosterone men see fighting as "the natural order of things." Many of them enjoy fighting. Fighting is a game for them, but it is also more than a gameit is a way of becoming dominant over others.
"Dominance" is the theme that brings together the masculine qualities associated with testosterone; it is a kind of personal power. Dominant people can influence others because the others admire them or fear them. Dominance includes the way a person stands, walks, and talks; it includes skills, personality, and frame of mind; it includes brute force, violence, and fighting. All these elements are related to testosterone, tending to make higher-testosterone individuals more dominant. Perhaps the most straightforward way of becoming dominant is by fighting.
Fighting is a natural part of life to Mike Roseberry, the construction superintendent who agreed to help with my research. He and I met in a bar to talk about hormones and violence. Fighting comes easily to him, and he thinks about it often. He gets irritated when he remembers hitting someone he should not have hit, or, even worse, not hitting someone he should have. I told Mike I wanted to know how a person's testosterone level would change during a fight. He quickly said, "I'll start a fight for you." I was taken by surprise and said to him, "Oh, no, thanks. I don't want you to have to fight." He said, ''I won't fight. I'll make somebody else do it." That sounded remarkable to me, and I asked how he would do it. He said, "It'll be easy. One day when it's raining and we're all off work at a bar, I'll go up to some guy I know having a drink. I'll put my hand on his shoulder and point across the room to someone else and say, 'I heard him say your old lady's a slut.' Then he'll go beat the other guy up." Mike thought it would be easy and fun.
Mike was telling an old story, one extending beyond what construction workers do on a rainy afternoon. He was talking about sex, violence, masculinity, and dominance. Men fight for the same reasons other animals fight, but their fights are also symbolic. Songs and stories, like the movie
Casablanca
's "fight for love or glory," are full of romantic references to fighting, and men live by those images in war and in barroom brawls.
Not long after that, Mike and a GSU student friend of his went to a party for Carl Sagan. It was 1991, and people at the party were talking
 
Page 61
about the Persian Gulf war. After the party, Mike told his friend, "Sagan and them was talking like there was something wrong with the war. People been fighting for centuries. Hell, fighting's a lot more natural than being a damn scientist." Mike's simple macho view brings to mind lines from Kipling: "These four greater than all things are, Women and horses and power and war."
The drive toward dominance is so much second nature to high-testosterone men that they, like Mike, are often quite casual about it. Mike would find it easy to start a fight in a bar because there would be plenty of men looking for a fight, men like the workers at the Nucor Steel Company. One such worker, delayed long after midnight in starting a new cast of molten steel, was cheerful when he told his coworkers, "Look at it this way. By the time we get a cast, it'll be morning, and the bars will be open again. So after we cast we can get a drink, and then maybe we can get into a fight." He would like to win, but just having a fight sounded like a good idea.
43
A construction worker or a steelworker who ignores an insult to his "old lady" seems less of a man to his friends, and maybe to his "old lady," too. Some women, maybe themselves high in testosterone, push men who are slow to take offense. The writer Katherine Dunn knows the appeal of dating bad men and the power that comes from controlling them. She wrote, "When he starts falling down on his badness, you have to test him, goad him. Maybe you have to lean back on the bar and thrust out your Wonderbra and say, 'You gonna let him talk to me like that?' Then you can glow as the hot beast fights for you and proves that his badness is yours to command."
44
With no joy or enthusiasm, and no desire to encourage men to fight, a Cormac McCarthy character voices sad agreement with Dunn's bottom line. Three times a war widow, a grandmother in
The Crossing
advises her granddaughter about men. She says it is unfortunate that women find rash men so appealing, but they do, and it is because women know in their secret hearts that men who won't kill for them are useless.
45
Lady Elaine, who lived in King Arthur's day, opposed men's fighting. She knew many women encouraged men to fight, but she thought it was a bad idea. She said, ''Most women want their men to go out and fight for glory. When the men are brought in killed or wounded, the same women feel that life is very hard, and some of them complain it's hardest on women. Silly, I say."
46
 
Page 62
One good reason for women to discourage fighting is to protect themselves. Men mostly attack each other, but they sometimes attack women. Men are most likely to attack women they think have belittled or insulted them, as happens with women who leave them or threaten to leave. The high-testosterone drive for domination can translate into the desire to control a wife or girlfriend, with the result that when a woman leaves a man, she not only insults him, she makes him feel as though he has lost control.
I heard about a young plumber who was upset when his wife filed for divorce. He used a strategy of mixed messages to win her back. Each Friday he sent roses and a love note. Each Sunday, disappointed by her continued rejection, he called up to browbeat and bully her. If he saw her on Sunday, he was likely to be physically abusive. Some men in similar situations resort to killing. An Australian study found that men who killed their mates more often did so when their mates tried to leave them.
47
Even when a high-testosterone man is not violent, his need to dominate can cause problems in a close relationship.
Men who want to control things show up everywhere. An airline flight attendant told me she finds competition among men always close to the surface. She said the airlines do not like to have men sitting together near an emergency exit, because in a crisis they may fight over who is in charge, rather than behaving in an orderly fashion to get out of the airplane. She was speaking of men in general, and I am sure the risk is even greater among high-testosterone men.
Most scientists do not think children have enough testosterone to affect their behavior, but I disagree, and my students and I have studied testosterone and dominance in children.
*
The drive for dominance, and its link to testosterone, asserts itself early. Before children reach the age of three, groups of boys play differently than groups of girls: boys dominate each other, while girls show give and take.
48
Girls don't like to play with boys, because the boys try to beat them up. Boys don't like to play with girls, because they think girls are "wimps" who won't fight. Girls argue more reasonably than boys; they make their points and listen to each other and say, "Yes, you're right, but let's . . . ," while boys steamroller each other with "No you're not!" "Yes I am!" ''No you're not!" "Yes
*
This work is described in more detail in Chapter 4.

Other books

The Mystery of the Purple Pool by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Murder within Murder by Frances Lockridge
Millie and the Night Heron by Catherine Bateson
Una vecina perfecta by Caroline L. Jensen
Sinners and Saints by Ambear Shellea
Holiday Illusion by Lynette Eason
The Heart of Revenge by Richie Drenz