1997 TheTroubleWithTestosterone
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- (Sapolsky, 1997a) ⇒ Robert Sapolsky. (1997). “The Trouble With Testosterone.” In: The Trouble With Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament. Scribner. ISBN:0-684-83891-5
Subject Headings: Testosterone, Endocrinological Behaviorism.
Notes
Quotes
- What is referred to as a hormone having a "permissive effect."
- Hierarchy in place, it's time to do your experiment. Take that third-ranking monkey and give him some testosterone. Non of this within-the-normal-range stuff. Inject a ton of it into him, way higher than what you normally see in a rhesus monkey; give him enough testosterone to grow antlers and a beard on every neuron in his brain.
- Does the action of this hormone tell us anything about individual differences in levels of aggression, anything about why some males, some human males, are exceptionally violent? Among an array of males - human or otherwise - are the highest testosterone levels found in the most aggressive individuals?
- What is referred to as a hormone having a "permissive effect."
- Hierarchy in place, it's time to do your experiment. Take that third-ranking monkey and give him some testosterone. Non of this within-the-normal-range stuff. Inject a ton of it into him, way higher than what you normally see in a rhesus monkey; give him enough testosterone to grow antlers and a beard on every neuron in his brain.
- … behavioral biologists ...
- You take the hoary old dichotomy between nature and nurture, between ideological influences and environmental influences, between intrinsic factors and extrinsic ones, and, the vast majority of the time, regardless of which behavior you are thinking about and what underlying biology you are studying, the dichotomy is a sham, No biology. No environment. Just the interaction between the two.
- When people first grasp the extent to which biology has something to do with behavior, even subtel, complex, human behavior, there is often an initial evangelical enthusiasm of the convert, a massive placing of faith in the biological component of the story. And this enthusiasm is typically of a fairly reductive type - because of physics envy, because reductionism is so impressive, because it would be so nice if there was a single gene or hormone or neurotransmitter or part of that brain that was it, the cause, the explanation of everything. And the trouble with testosterone is that people tend to think this way in an arena that really matters.
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