Women university students’ stereotypical assessments of potential women threatening rivals: Testosterone and cortisol effects on perception and judgment.

Abstract

Testosterone and cortisol in women are involved in regulating social and sexual behavior. So far, research shows that the interaction of these hormones modulates dominant and submissive personalities, empathy, and reactive aggression. In this study, we investigated whether women's testosterone and cortisol contribute to attributing different characteristics of sexual threatening, attractiveness, success, dominance, and flirtatiousness to female morphs that vary in waist-to-hip ratio (WHR; 0.6, 0.7, 0.8) after being prepared to imagine a scenario of sexual competition. One hundred forty-two female volunteers recruited from various university faculties provided a 6-ml saliva sample for hormonal analyses and, subsequently, rated the five attributes for each morph. Testosterone and cortisol did not affect identifying the 0.7 WHR as the more sexually threatening. Participants with high testosterone and low cortisol gave demeaning rates to the three morphs, except for the dominance of the 0.7 morphs, which received high scores. These patterns might suggest this hormone profile is associated with women's proactive aggression, including rival derogation. In contrast, women with high testosterone and cortisol gave higher scores to all morphs except for dominance suggesting this hormone profile might be associated with threat detection. In summary, our results provide novel information on the effects of C and T on the interpretation of the sexual and social behavior of potential rivals according to their WHRs. Public Significance StatementThis study acknowledges that the synergistic action of feminine testosterone and cortisol effects induce a cognitive bias when qualifying putative behaviors of female morphs having 0.6, 0.7, and 0.8 waist-to-hip ratios. In general, demeaning ratings to all body shapes correlated with low cortisol and high testosterone levels, while appraising happened when both hormones were elevated. Finally, independently from hormones' actions, participants recognized the 0.7 waist-to-hip as the most threatening rival.