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:: Current research project
Effects of social competition and social context on hormones and behaviour: testing the challenge hypothesis in humans.
A major challenge in current psychobiology is to understand how psychosocial factors can modulate biological mechanisms. Androgens, classically though of as the sex steroids controlling male reproduction, are influenced by social interactions suggesting a reciprocal type of interaction between androgens and behaviour. These results have been interpreted as an adaptation for the individuals to adjust their agonistic motivation to changes in the social environment in which they are inserted. Thus, male-male interactions would stimulate the production of androgens and the levels of androgens would be a function of the stability of the social environment in which the subject is living - "challenge hypothesis". The social modulation of circulating androgen levels has also been documented for humans, and the main goal of this project is to investigate the mechanisms and the adaptive function of this social effects.
Funded by: FCT-PTDC/PSI/80985/2006
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