تستوسترون آندوژن و کورتیزول به طور مشترک خشونت واکنشی در زنان را تحت تاثیر قرار می دهد

The dual-hormone hypothesis posits that the effect of testosterone on social behavior is moderated by cortisol. The present study tested this hypothesis with a competitive reactive aggression paradigm in 53 healthy undergraduate women. Salivary cortisol and testosterone were assessed at baseline. Participants were personally insulted and subsequently given the opportunity to retaliate by administering blasts of white noise to the provocateur. Participants were randomly assigned to win or lose the aggressive competition. Basal testosterone positively predicted reactive aggression and state dominance, but only among participants with high concentrations of basal cortisol. The corresponding, reverse pattern was found for state submissiveness. Winners also had higher concentrations of testosterone than losers following the aggressive competition. We discuss the role of heightened reactivity to social provocation as a possible explanation for these effects.

Reactive aggression is known as hostile, impulsive, or affective aggression and can encompass verbal and physical assaults, road rage, domestic and workplace violence, and homicide. This type of aggression is in contrast to instrumental or proactive aggression, which is aggression enacted to obtain a secondary goal (e.g., a violent assault to obtain money). Decades of research have documented social, genetic, personality, neurobiological, and environmental determinants of reactive aggression. Of relevance for the present research is recent work implicating the hormones testosterone and cortisol as risk factors for aggression and violence (Terburg et al., 2009, Carré and Mehta, 2011, Carré et al., 2011 and Eisenegger et al., 2011). We examined the interactive influence of endogenous concentrations of testosterone and cortisol on reactive aggression among undergraduate women during a competitive aggression paradigm.