Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (37 page)

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Authors: James McBride Dabbs,Mary Godwin Dabbs

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BOOK: Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior
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Page 149
ers are born into their occupation. Land is expensive and the life is hard, and few people go into farming from the outside. Most people who are born into farming today leave when they grow up, but those who stay are part of a stable community. Farmers help each other, and they are seldom involved in one-on-one competition.
Some people call farmers "rednecks"; others call them "the salt of the earth." These mixed views, and the real lives of farmers, would not seem to suggest high levels of testosterone. It is a little-known fact that farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. Many farmers die in accidents, and in a group of farmers one is likely to notice arms or fingers missing. But in spite of the violence of life close to nature and heavy machinery, personal violence between farmers is rare. Farmers may have something in common with ministers, who are also low in testosterone. Both ministers and farmers have to be patient about things they cannot control. Ministers put up with sin and farmers put up with weather. Willa Cather wrote, "On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.''
29
Other investigators have studied testosterone in rural people. A study in Peru found farmers lower in testosterone than urban dwellers.
30
Current studies of men in Boston and of Ache hunter-gatherers and farmers in Paraguay have found men in Boston highest in testosterone and hunter-gatherers lowest.
31
The Ache, incidentally, are very violent in spite of their low testosterone levels. There is a great deal we do not know about how diet and lifestyle affect testosterone and how the presence of other people in a competitive city environment might raise testosterone levels. Among some birds, being among competitors in the mating season can raise testosterone levels.
32
Environmental factors might produce average testosterone differences among people within different cultures.
According to the veterans data, high testosterone levels do not bring money, prestige, and general success in our culture.
33
High-testosterone veterans left school sooner than did low-testosterone veterans, probably because they tended to be rambunctious and impatient. These tendencies interfere with getting an education, which is usually essential to white-collar success. High-testosterone boys don't like to sit and listen to the teacher day after day, and high-testosterone men find
 
Page 150
most white-collar work boring and confining. This makes it difficult for them to hold on to high-status jobs. Their excessive competitiveness might also interfere with white-collar success, where being a "team player" is at a premium. A study of success in the business world has shown that while the motive to achieve is helpful, the motive to compete interferes with achievement.
34
Maybe competition helps only when two people, like the Nobel prizewinning scientists mentioned earlier, want the same thing and push each other on to greater accomplishments.
The fact that higher testosterone correlates with lower status is surprising to many people, especially to successful business and professional men. Such men often regard themselves as macho and believe they are successful because their testosterone gives them a competitive edge. They do not have the story quite right. If they do in fact have high testosterone levels, which is not too likely, they should thank their parents and teachers for having been patient and skillful enough to civilize them.
The Irony of Testosterone
Some occupations are supported by testosterone, some are in conflict with testosterone, and for some testosterone is irrelevant. When a friend of ours, Sharon Leventhal, was three, she said to her mother, "Mommy, I want to play the violin, because it's boo-tee-ful." She knew what she wanted, and she became a solo concert violinist. For most of us, finding an occupation comes at the end of a long path, and it is a compromise between what we want and what we can find.
Occupations are cultural creations, with ancient origins based on human needs and human nature. As we find more sophisticated ways to meet our needs, new jobs replace old ones. Occupations divide up the work that has to be done, and with technological advances, occupations have become more and more specialized. Ranchers have replaced hunters, as airplane mechanics have replaced blacksmiths and word processors have replaced scribes.
Modern and ancient forces come together in occupations. Ancient forces affect our temperament, testosterone levels, and even our enjoyment of our work.
35
High levels of testosterone evolved when the
 
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human race was young and people needed the skills of youth. High testosterone helped them compete, but it also led them to take risks, fight, get injured, and die youngand now it interferes with many modern activities. High-testosterone individuals are energetic but impatient; they do poorly in school and end up with fewer years of education; they can dominate others in face-to-face meetings, but they have trouble handling the complexities of business; they lean toward harsh and competitive activities and away from subdued and thoughtful ones. High testosterone is a drawback when careful planning, reliable work habits, and patience are needed, or when workers must attend to the needs of others. Except for a few of the top jobs in sports and acting, high testosterone, to my knowledge, does not contribute to financial success.
There is an irony to this. Natural selection gave an advantage to men with high levels of testosterone during thousands of years of violence and hardship. They developed muscular bodies and the skills needed for hunting and fighting, and now these qualities get them into trouble. It is understandable that high-testosterone men themselves would find little humor in this. Irony is for intellectuals with highly developed verbal skills. In the movie
Roxanne
, Steve Martin explained to Darryl Hannah about humor in Aspen, Colorado. He said, "Oh . . . irony . . . oh, no no, we don't get that here. See, people here ski topless while smoking dope, so irony is not really a top priority. We haven't had any real irony here since about '83, when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."
36
If it's not funny in Aspen, it's hardly funny to an unemployed man.
Viewed more seriously, testosterone carries an element of tragedy that would appeal to the ancient Greeks. The Greeks saw tragedy in the mixed nature of human character, where strong individuals brought destruction upon themselves through their efforts to do what they thought was right. The classic tragic figure was Oedipus, who grew up believing he was an orphan. In a relentless search for truth, he found out that he was not an orphan and that he had unwittingly killed his own father and married his mother. He found the truth so awful that he blinded himself. Tragedy arises when testosterone is selected because it brings success in one-on-one encounters, and this sets the individual on a course of action that reduces the chance of more lasting success. High levels of testosterone brought the force and energy that helped to
 
Page 152
develop the modern world: bold traders, sailors, and explorers traveled and exchanged ideas and materials; shipwrights designed vessels for trade and exploration; copper miners and traders brought resources that made the bronze age possible. Life and ideas grew at the frontiers of experience, and restless individuals explored and mastered a material world that supports our intellectual world. High-testosterone individuals helped to build the modern world, and the modern world restricts them. High testosterone is close to the intersection of what is tragic and what is simply ironic. What evolved as an advantage so many generations ago is now often at cross-purposes with the demands of society.
Steve Olson, the "Blue Collar Guy" in
Newsweek
, saw the saga of human history repeated in his lifetime. He said:
While we were building the world we live in, white-collar types were sitting on their ever-widening butts redefining the values we live by. One symbol of America's opulent wealth is the number of people who can sit and ponder and comment and write without producing a usable product or skill. Hey, get a real jobmake somethingthen talk. These talkers are the guys we drove from the playgrounds into the libraries when we were young and now for 20 years or more we have endured the revenge of the nerds.
37
 
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PART THREE
CIVILIZATION
 
Page 155
7
Dear Ladies and Gentle Men
A Kinder and Gentler World
Bruce Harvey, the high-testosterone defense lawyer described in Chapter 6, charmed Colleen Heusel. He was so pleasant and attentive when he interviewed prospective jurors that he changed the bad impression she had from seeing him on the news. Friendliness is not the distinguishing attribute of high-testosterone people, but it is a skill they can master along with good manners. High-testosterone people often excel at charm.
Although Harvey met the jury panel with an open and friendly manner, I know from seeing him in his adversarial role that he is not always so amiable. Another Harvey was nice all the time. He was the invisible talking rabbit in the play
Harvey
.
1
Harvey the rabbit brought happiness to everyone, and his main companion was Elwood Dowd, a gentle man. Elwood explained his philosophy to Dr. Chumley, a psychiatrist, "Dr. Chumley, my mother used to say to me, 'In this world, Elwood'she always called me Elwoodshe'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." Perhaps he depended on intelligence until he reached the age when a drop in testosterone made it possible for him to be consistently pleasant.
Elwood Dowd would have liked the song "Dear Hearts and Gentle People," which was popular in the 1950s. The words of this song do not have any ring of testosterone to them. Times change, and songs about gentle feelings are less common in today's world of violence, sophistica-
 
Page 156
tion, and hard-driving achievement. They sound corny to us when we are used to seeing fast-paced violent film clips, such as those one television network runs to advertise "movies for guys who like movies."
With parents and grandparents all over America alarmed about school violence, there are signs that we might be ready for a "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" revival. George W. Bush has been talking about "compassionate conservatism," and Deborah Tannen has been writing and speaking in favor of good manners and consideration for others.
2
My students and I will know there's been a major turnaround when our subjects who learn that they are in the low-normal range for testosterone aren't disappointed. They shouldn't be disappointed at all, because as other chapters of this book have suggested, there are advantages to having low testosterone. As a group, low-testosterone people tend to be more friendly, more intellectual, and more interested in the welfare of others than are high-testosterone people. Low-testosterone people tend to do better in school, have higher-status occupations, feel closer to their friends and families, and have happier marriages. With all of this in their favor, it's not surprising that low-testosterone people smile more than high-testosterone people do.
Smile! You've Got Low Testosterone!
My students and I began to notice that friendly and pleasant people were often low in testosterone. We checked this out by finding volunteers who seemed to be "nice guys" and collecting saliva samples from them for testosterone assay. For example, we selected one of the friendliest and most pleasant graduate students we knew. He was patient, considerate, calm, and likable. When we measured his testosterone level, we found it was low.
An important part of being friendly is having a nice smile, not the superficial kind of smile political observer Myra MacPherson describes as a "politician's smilethe kind that never reaches the eyes,"
3
but a sincere smile that makes crinkles around the corners of the eyes. In one study, we examined the facial expressions of 119 male and 114 female college students.
4
First we collected a saliva sample from each subject to measure testosterone. Then Paula Williams, a student assistant with a confident manner and an attractive smile herself, took two pictures of

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