McCain supporters in Phoenix react to the bad news in the 2008 presidential election. Research suggests that the men experienced a testosterone drop.
Image: Mark Wilson Getty Images
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With its winners and losers, politics is a lot like sports. Now biologists have the testosterone—or lack thereof—to prove it. Specifically, they have found that male voters who back a losing candidate experience a drop in the hormone.
Immediately before and after the 2008 U.S. presidential election result, neuroscientists from Duke University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor collected the saliva of 163 college-age participants to determine the amount of testosterone in their systems. Male voters for winner Barack Obama had stable levels of testosterone, but the hormone rapidly declined in males who cast ballots for losers John McCain and Robert Barr. Female voters showed no significant testosterone changes after victory or defeat of their candidate.
Past research has shown that winning and losing in sports matches and other competitions affect testosterone levels in men. The new findings, published online October 21 by PLoS ONE, reveal that politics can influence testosterone in men “just as if they directly engaged head to head in a contest for dominance,” says Kevin LaBar of Duke, the study’s senior researcher.
In separate work, anthropologist Coren Apicella of Harvard University and her colleagues obtained similar results with a smaller group, findings they will publish this year. “It’s an exciting time for people who study political behavior, where biological factors have largely been ignored,” she notes. “Political scientists are starting to recognize the role of biology, and more and more research is showing there may be some reciprocal interactions between how elections make one feel and how feelings can affect political behavior.”
Testosterone is linked to aggression, risk taking and responses to threats. Bumps and drops in testosterone levels after competition can help both winners and losers in all species, explains Steven Stanton, the Duke study’s lead author. Victors may get motivated to pursue further gains, whereas also-rans are encouraged to back down so as not to press onward and potentially get injured. Indeed, in the Duke study, McCain and Barr voters reported feeling significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant after the loss than the Obama supporters did.
The team conjectures that because the shift in the hierarchy of dominance in the nation after a presidential election is stable for at least four years, the stress of having one’s political party lose executive control could plausibly lead to continued testosterone suppression in males. But “it’s hard to know how long-lasting these effects might be,” LaBar remarks, considering that many factors influence testosterone levels.
LaBar and his team, though, are shifting gears. “We’re now going to try and explore this in spectator sports,” he says. “Sports competitions are not like the political process, where you can have a direct influence on the outcome, but obviously avid sports fans are highly invested personally in the outcome of a game.”
Note: This story was originally printed with the title "Machismo Mayhem"
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10 Comments
Add CommentDon't worry, our testosterone levels will make a terrific comeback this November and especially in 2012 when Sarah Palin gets us all really excited with her head-on assault on man-made climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a conveniently vague concept that is, by the way. A pro-anthropogenic global warming graduate student wrote a fuzzy column in our local paper today explaining how some places will be in drought, and others flood, some species will disappear, others will be moving in and taking over, all (he sez) because of evil man-made pollution via CO2,
An interesting study at worldclimatereport.com this week is a comprehensive review of Greenland's temps and ice cover in the last 100 years, which contains a graph showing Greenland to be as warm in 1930 as it is today. Further, the ascent to the temperature spike in 1930 was steeper than today's gradual rise, and we should also expect that in coming decades Greenland is going to cool off again, like it always has.
I say it will cool off again as the Little Ice Age comes on. One way you can track this phenomenon is by the sale of heat tape for water pipes and automotive tire chains.
There is another great map of the Arctic summer ice-meltback out this week which shows dramatic meltback in the Arctic north of where the prevailing winds take dust and soot from China and dump these pollutants on the surface of the ice. Dirty ice melts much quicker in sunlight than pristine ice. I maintain that this cause will continue to melt sea ice in the Arctic in the summer, but will expand no further towards the North Pole because the winds don't take East Asian dust that far.
We are going to have an interesting test of the man-made global warming hypothesis when CO2 levels surpass 400 ppm in this new decade but temperatures experienced by actual humans continue to drop. No telling what "official" temperatures will be doing because the political bureaucrats monitoring the "official" measuring instruments will be twisting and skewing their data to make things warmer just as they have done for the last 30 years. Torture statistics enough and they will confess to anything.
We unwashed masses will be endlessly lectured on how weather isn't science. Well, official science apparently isn't science either.
At any rate, nothing warms me up like images of Sarah Palin on the attack against pompous bureaucratic buffoonery, you betcha!
Wow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIF you think that Mrs. Palin is a credible candidate for President......welllllllllllllllllllll........I have a bridge to sell you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe facts about Greenland in your post are accurate tho.
We have had any number of unqualified people elected to president. The latest was a community organizer from Chicago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least he appoints scientists in science positions which is more than can be said for GOP presidents. Some of the posters here are still suffering from testosterone drop and low testosterone is linked to bullying. Please just go get a pill or work out; stop the bullying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not news. In the 80's, studies of male baboons that had been in a fight showed an increase in testosterone in the male that one and a drop in the one that lost. The test was done in humans, specifically, college wrestlers, and the same results were found. It was also found the same in male tennis players.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question, which has yet to be answered,is how can psychologically interpreting an experience as winning or losing result in a physiological change, i.e. the increase or decrease in hormone secretion?
Still waiting on psychoneuroendocrinolgists to answer that one.
From an evolutionary point of view, Stanton et. al. need to answer how a decrease in testosterone for the loser helps spread his genes. There are theories, perhaps discussed in the full article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last unqualified person elected to president, is currently in office.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf their testosterone levels fell to the level of their IQs it would be a good thing. There has been far too much posturing and hormone driven buffoonery in politics as it is. Time for rational and cool minds to prevail. When the Rs realize this, and boot the moronic neo-cons out of the party, they might be able to elect a qualified president. The current president is doing exactly what he was elected to do, mostly maintain the status quo, and protect the monied interests that got him elected. You don't really think that presidents "lead" their country do you? Are you low testosterone morons really that stupid? The country is led around by its nose by media consortiums who sell their services to the highest bidder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe baboons have a drop in testosterone, because they become sub-doms and show their rumps. This subdues the aggression of the dominant males, who then look elsewhere for a fight, allowing the sub-dom males to strategically retreat and to fight another day. He may yet have a chance at a high ranking female, and in the meantime can forcefully copulate with females in the bush when the alpha males are busy fighting another contender. Can't pass any genes if you are dead dummy! Or is that concept too complicated for a McCain supporter?
Do you suppose Sarah Palin's testosterone fell too?
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