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The challenge hypothesis still describes a relationship between testosterone and aggression that is exclusive to males; it just turned out to be a little more c

• belorn 4y ago
  It is not exclusive to males. It work just as effective on females. Since females start out with significant lower (but not zero) levels of testosterone, changes in levels actually have larger impact on females. I don't disagree that biological sex influences behavior. What is important however is that what people think it does is generally not what it actually do. To take estrogen as an example, too much or too little do have a link to mental instability. It is very hard however to defined exactly what estrogen do as a biological influencer. As with testosterone and aggression, estrogen does not cause women to go crazy. When people believe that hormones has that kind of effect the outcome tend to be bad, as well as being anti-science. Testosterone levels in males rises after gaining social status. High testosterone levels in turn increase calorie usages that goes towards behavior which correlated to maintaining and defending existing levels of social status. In some cultures there is a correlation between both gaining social status and maintaining social status with aggression. How should one then describe the biological relation between testosterone and aggression? One could simplify and say that testosterone has a bias in our culture towards aggression and estrogen has a bias towards mental illness, but even that would likely not be helpful in explaining difference in behavior between men and women.