Testosterone across successive competitions: evidence for a 'winner effect' in humans?
Abstract
In many species testosterone fluctuates in concert with outcome-dependent changes in social status, such that winning a competition leads to an increase in circulating testosterone (i.e., competition effect). Although this phenomenon has been well studied in humans, the cumulative endocrine impact of multiple successive competitions is poorly understood. Moreover, although changes in testosterone after a competition seem to predict immediate aggressive behavior, competitive motivation, risk-taking, and affiliation, whether this endocrine response also has long-term behavioral effects, as suggested by studies in non-human animals, has not been examined. In this study, salivary testosterone was collected from pairs of male participants engaging, on two consecutive days, in head-to-head competitions on a previously validated laboratory task. We found that testosterone reactivity on the first day, which was congruent with the competition effect (i.e., net testosterone increase in randomly assigned winners), predicted the task performance on the second day. Further, when looking at testosterone reactivity on the second day, those individuals that lost both competitions experienced the steepest decline in testosterone compared to those individuals who lost on the second day but won on the first day. Testosterone fluctuations on the second day were also analyzed considering the type of status hierarchy (stable vs. unstable) that emerged as a result of the combined outcomes of the…
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Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design.
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