Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science passes along some fun news about gender, hormones, and “biology is destiny” memes. Questions of accuracy and bias arise in any study, and any news account of a study, but the information to assumption ratio in Yong’s piece is wonderful. Here are his opening paragraphs (emphasis his.)

What do you think a group of women would do if they were given a dose of testosterone before playing a game? Our folk wisdom tells us that they would probably become more aggressive, selfish or antisocial. Well, that’s true… but only if they think they’ve been given testosterone.

If they don’t know whether they’ve been given testosterone or placebo, the hormone actually has the opposite effect to the one most people would expect – it promotes fair play. The belligerent behaviour stereotypically linked to testosterone only surfaces if people think they’ve been given hormone, whether they receive a placebo or not. So strong are the negative connotations linked to testosterone that they can actually overwhelm and reverse the hormone’s actual biological effects.

He said it here.

That’s actually pretty consistent with…

• findings related to testosterone levels in a variety of animals (but not, interestingly, the rats most of the early “confirmation” studies were done on) where aggressive and/or risk-taking behavior is undertaken to elevate testosterone levels in males, not as a result of elevated testosterone.

• findings related to people’s reactions when they’re led to believe they’ve been given (or haven’t been) doses of other behavior-modifying compounds like alcohol and caffeine where for instance, going back at least as far as the 1960s where people are more likely, say, to act drunk when told they’ve been given more alcohol than they thought, or less drunk when told they’ve been given only a small amount.

And I’m inclined to trust the reporter not least because he seems to have done actual analysis reporting instead of regurgitating lurid bits. I’m inclined to trust the researcher because a) he doesn’t seem to be talking about the effect of a hormone on people rather than trying to prove gendered mandates and b) while his subjects were women that appears to be mostly because women respond more consistently and predictably to measured doses of testosterone than do men. (Which would also be consistent with findings that in men behavior changes a lot more in relation to relative rather than absolute amounts.)

I did say trust, though. Since the research appears to be gated behind a commercial firewall I can’t verify. So all I can say is it sounds interesting. And sounds measured. And sounds more like basic reporting on basic science than expectation-driven “just so” stories.

(Via Mackenzie at Geek Feminism Blog.)

Ann of Feministing cites an interesting twist on investing strategies. (Quoting a Wall Street Journal article, italics mine.)

Where Wall Street’s drug of choice used to be cocaine, today it could be estrogen. A hedge fund broker working at SAC Capital in Connecticut sued his boss in late October for allegedly demanding that he take estrogen to become a more successful trader. The case was sealed when it moved to arbitration. A spokesperson for SAC refused to comment.

Read the quote in context here.

Seriously! The real hoot is that they want estrogen-enriched traders so they… make men take supplements instead of, oh, y’know, hiring women.

I dunno. Maybe it is a need for physical size on trading floors as Feministing commenter WendyAnn hints. But I bet there’s some other reason.

That said, the effects of testosterone really are pretty misunderstood. In case after case, even species after species, aggressiveness and hostility usually crop up when levels drop.

I certainly see that in a friend who’s lost his own ability to produce it. He gets a shot about once a month and he becomes terribly irritable just before, and cheery/mellow after. I remember reading on one article or another a few years ago about scientists giving animals enough testosterone “to make a coffee cup grow antlers” without causing any increase in aggressiveness. The tricky bit is that aggressive behavior, especially successful aggression, can stimulate testosterone secretions so… So it’s still associated with aggression and risk-taking, just not the way most people assume.

And for the record, in my women’s-studies/sex-ed/communications course last quarter, in a lecture on the menstrual cycle, the prof noted that symptoms associated with PMS show up when estrogen and progesterone levels are lowest, not highest. Meaning, she said dryly, that just like men it’s usually inaccurate to say someone’s feeling “hormonal.”

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Note: I still can’t believe they don’t just hire women, though, if they want more estrogen in the workplace. Doi! Old habits die really hard I guess.