Threat perception and familiarity moderate the androgen response to competition in women

Abstract

Social interactions elicit androgen responses whose function has been posited to be the adjustment of androgen-dependent behaviors to social context. The activation of this androgen response is known to be mediated and moderated by psychological factors. In this study we tested the hypothesis that the testosterone (T) changes after a competition are not simply related to its outcome, but rather to the way the subject evaluates the event. In particular we tested two evaluative dimensions of a social interaction: familiarity with the opponent and the subjective evaluation of the outcome as threat or challenge. Challenge/threat occurs in goal relevant situations and represent different motivational states arising from the individuals’ subjective evaluation of the interplay between the task demands and coping resources possessed. For challenge the coping resources exceed the task demands, while threat represents a state where coping resources are insufficient to meet the task demands. In this experiment women competed in pairs, against a same sex opponent using the number tracking test as a competitive task. Losers appraised the competition outcome as more threatening than winners, and displayed higher post-competition T levels than winners. No differences were found either for cortisol (C) or for dehydroepiandrosterone. Threat, familiarity with the opponent and T response were associated only in the loser condition. Moderation analysis suggests that for the women that lost the competition the effect of threat on T is moderated by familiarity with the opponent.

Testosterone response to competition in males is unrelated to opponent familiarity or threat appraisal

“…In a previous experiment with women, we provide stronger evidence that familiarity moderated T responses to a face-to-face competition event appraised as a threat (Oliveira et al, 2013). In this study T increased more in losers that evaluated the outcome as a threat while competing against unfamiliar opponents, while cortisol (C) and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) levels remained at their pre-competition levels (Oliveira et al, 2013).…”

“…In this study T increased more in losers that evaluated the outcome as a threat while competing against unfamiliar opponents, while cortisol (C) and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) levels remained at their pre-competition levels (Oliveira et al, 2013). On the other hand, winners appraised the competition outcome as less threatening than losers and no significant changes were detected for any of the measured hormones (T, C, and DHEA).…”

“…As in previous experiments (Schultheiss et al, 1999; Carré et al, 2009; Oliveira et al, 2013), the Number Tracking Test (NTT) was used for the competitive task. The NTT requires participants to connect a sequence of consecutive ascending numbers (1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, …) arranged in a matrix and surrounded by distracting numbers, until a highlighted number is reached.…”

“…To experimentally assign participants to the winner or loser condition, the length of the NTT matrices was manipulated (i.e., winners had shorter NTT matrices than losers). This procedure has been previously used in NTT competition (Schultheiss et al, 1999; Carré et al, 2009; Oliveira et al, 2013) and allows an undetectable manipulation of the outcome, since participants have no access to their opponent matrices and therefore cannot assess the relative difficulty of their matrices. Experimental conditions associated with a side of the table were randomized and pre-determined before the experiment and participants were free to choose their position.…”

“…Because men and women tend to exhibit differences in appraisal tendencies toward competition (for a review see Niederle and Vesterlund, 2011) and it has been previously suggested that there may be sex differences for the T response to competition (Kivlighan et al, 2005; Josephs et al, 2011), we decided to investigate if the previous findings described above would also be valid for males, or if there was a sex difference in the cognitive moderation of the T response to competition in humans. Therefore, in this study we tested if males display the same pattern of endocrine response as females to a face-to-face contest, and if opponent familiarity and threat vs. challenge appraisal of the outcome (winner/loser) moderates males T response to competition, using the same experimental paradigm as in Oliveira et al (2013). Although we have not found changes in C and DHEA for women, these hormones were also monitored in this experiment since it is established that C responds to social stress, influences cognitive variables (e.g., McEwen and Sapolsky, 1995) and is known to interact with T in case of social contests (Mehta and Josephs, 2010).…”