By rickyjames, Section News Posted on Mon Nov 03, 2003 at 08:06:33 AM PST
Nature is reporting some interesting research by James R. Roney, who set up his own little reality show in the student biology labs at the University of Chicago. He paid male students $10 to come into the lab and leave a saliva sample. Unbeknownst to the men, the scientists staged a five-minute chat with a twentysomething female research assistant before they spit. This brief brush set the men's hormones surging: testosterone levels in their spit shot up around 30%. The higher a man's hormone soared, the more the female research assistant judged that he was out to impress - by talking about himself, for example.
As subsequently written up by Roney in Evolution and Human Behavior: "Results were generally consistent with the hypothesis that human males may exhibit a behavioral and endocrine courtship response that is similar to that observed in males of many nonhuman vertebrate species."
In other testosterone-related news today, many men's health specialists worry that testosterone replacement in older men may offer little benefit and may lead to more severe medical problems in the future. Testosterone replacement therapy, or TRT, has been used to treat a collection of symptoms that some doctors and drug companies have dubbed andropause, or male menopause.
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