Soldiers are not the only people who engage in "combat." At any street corner or community gathering there are likely to be a few rough characters, and some of these people belong to what we call the counterculture. They reject the mainstream values of society, and they stand out in dress, manner, hairstyle, body decoration, and behavior. They are different enough to make others feel threatened and uncomfortable.
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Terry Banks was an undergraduate honors student who had friends and acquaintances in the counterculture. She wanted to know whether testosterone might explain some of their behavior. We compared twenty-nine delinquent acquaintances of hers (sixteen men and thirteen women) with thirty-six college students of similar age. All the delinquents used drugs and listened to grunge music, and some were former skinheads; several of the men were musicians, and several of the women were strippers. Everyone in the group had a strong dislike for authority, which made them likely to encounter problems with the police. Nineteen of the twenty-nine had body art, tattoos, or piercings other than for earrings. Twenty-four had used a weapon on someone, twenty-five had been in fights in the last year, twelve had been arrested, and four had served prison time. Two had killed someone, and a third had shot someone and thought he might have killed him, but had not stayed around long enough to see whether the person had died. We analyzed spit samples from these people and found that the delinquent group, including both men and women, was higher in testosterone than the college student group. Banks took photographs of all her subjects. Their expressions were friendlyafter all, she was their friendbut along with their smiles came skull, snake, and dagger tattoos, striking hairstyles, and flamboyant attire, including Ted Bundy T-shirts.
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Trying to find people who were a little tamer than Banks's friends, but still rambunctious, we examined college fraternities.
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A popular image of fraternities includes young men partying, drinking, smoking, and chasing women. Usually the image does not include young men studying, but fraternities are a mixed bunch and a good place to get testosterone scores from groups that show a wide range of behavior. Two of my student assistants, Marian Hargrove and Colleen Heusel, collected saliva samples from twelve fraternities on two southeastern university campuses. Hargrove collected samples at one university, and Heusel collected at the other. One or the other visited each fraternity
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