Androgen responsiveness to parental behavior: Nurturant contexts modulate effects of infant cues on human male testosterone.
-
1
University of Michigan, Psychology & Women's Studies, Neuroscience, United States
-
2
University of Michigan, School of Social Work, United States
-
3
University of Michigan, Psychology, United States
Testosterone (T) is theorized to be one of the proximate mechanisms driving life history trade-offs, with parenting/low T on one side, and challenges/high T on the other. Paradoxically, some infant-related behavioral contexts have been tied to higher T, e.g. in humans and fish. We hypothesized that nurturant responses to infants would decrease T, whereas cues signaling the need for infant defense - and not accompanied by a nurturant response - would increase T. Similar to non-human animal studies using fake conspecifics, we tested the effects of three conditions on T responses in men: an interactive infant doll that cried and was calmed via nurturant responses, the same infant cries presented via sound, and a control condition. We showed that infant cues do decrease T in men, but only when coupled with nurturant behavioral responses; whereas cues presented with no possibility of nurturant response increase T. These findings underscore that ‘parental’ or ‘infant’ behavioral contexts are not phenomenologically whole, and instead encompass behaviors linked to both low T (via nurturance) or high T (via infant defense). Moreover, this research highlights the importance of considering context and the potential for behavioral response, in lab studies of androgen responsivity.
Keywords:
androgen,
baby,
challenge,
cries,
cue,
Infant,
Parenting,
Testosterone
Conference:
NASCE 2011: The inaugural meeting of the North American Society for Comparative Endocrinology, Ann Arbor, United States, 13 Jul - 16 Jul, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Brain and behavior
Citation:
Van Anders
SM,
Tolman
RM and
Volling
BL
(2011). Androgen responsiveness to parental behavior: Nurturant contexts modulate effects of infant cues on human male testosterone..
Front. Endocrinol.
Conference Abstract:
NASCE 2011: The inaugural meeting of the North American Society for Comparative Endocrinology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fendo.2011.04.00060
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
22 Jul 2011;
Published Online:
09 Aug 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Sari M Van Anders, University of Michigan, Psychology & Women's Studies, Neuroscience, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, smva@umich.edu