Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (38 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 157
each subject. She took the first picture after telling the subject to relax and look toward the camera without smiling. Then she said, "Okay, now smile," and she smiled at the subject and took another picture.
We developed the pictures and lined them up on a tabletop from lowest to highest in testosterone. Among the females, there was no relationship between testosterone and facial expression. But among the males, the low-testosterone subjects looked more friendly to us. We examined the pictures in more detail, using the Facial Affect Coding System, which scores the muscle movements in facial expressions.
5
The analysis confirmed our hypothesis that low-testosterone males have more convincing smiles. The corners of their lips moved farther outward and upward, and the outer corners of their eyes crinkled more. Figure 7.1 shows the smile of a high-and the smile of a low-testosterone man. Figure 7.2 shows the nonsmiling expressions of the same two men.
The wide smiles and crinkles around the eyes, which indicate true enjoyment, were more typical of low-testosterone men.
6
The high-testosterone men may have been less happy, or they may have disliked being told to smile. Whatever the reason, their smiles showed less true enjoyment. Among the women there was no relation between their smiles and testosterone. Perhaps parents insist that their little girls smile and look pretty when they have their pictures taken, and by the time they grow up most of them have learned to smile convincingly at the camera.
When high-testosterone women are not posing for a picture, they are less likely to smile. At the University of Utah, anthropologist Eliza-
Figure 7.1
The smiling face of a high-testosterone man (
left
) and
a low-testosterone man (
right
).
 
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Figure 7.2
The nonsmiling face of a high-testosterone man (
left
) and
a low-testosterone man (
right
).
beth Cashdan studied a group of women students who lived together. When Cashdan watched the women talking in informal groups, she found that those who were lower in testosterone smiled more often.
7
This is different from what we found in the photographs, but we had asked our subjects to smile, and Cashdan let hers smile or not as they wished. Women posing for photographs may smile because they are expected to smile, while in informal settings they may smile because of their true feelings, which are affected by testosterone.
Next we looked at smiles among college fraternity men. We counted smiles among members of the low- and high-testosterone college fraternities mentioned in Chapter 3. We did this by examining pictures of individual fraternity members in college yearbooks, as well as group pictures displayed in the fraternity houses. Fewer members were smiling in the higher-testosterone fraternities than in the lower-testosterone ones. In fraternities where testosterone scores were highest, a third of the members were smiling, and where they were lowest, two-thirds were smiling. In candid shots taken at social events, the difference among fraternities was less noticeable. One group photograph showed the members of a high-testosterone fraternity gathered with their dates before a party. All the men were smiling, but their smiles had a "wolfish" quality, with little of the crinkling around the eyes that especially indicates true enjoyment.
I've seen men, whose attention was fixed on macho activities, smile
 
Page 159
a gentle smile that I think can be related to both testosterone and pure enjoyment. At a party, Mary and I watched our son James and a friend talking about explosions. Our friend had been present as an invited observer at the demolition of a large building. He described watching the building collapse and seeing a massive black cloud rise above the rubble and roll toward him, blotting out the sun and covering him with dust and soot. When he finished the story, both he and James sat quietly for a moment, savoring the image of the grand event. Both had sweet, angelic smiles on their faces. Soon after that, Mary and I saw similar sweet smiles again. We were in a store watching a mega-TV demo about car racing. The video alternated between shots of speeding cars and close-ups of members of a pit crew watching the race. The crew members, almost surely a high-testosterone group, seemed absorbed by the race and unaware of the people around them, including the cameraman. Their smiles were not like the wolfish grins the fraternity boys put on for their party pictures. The pit crew members seemed to be smiling because they were truly enjoying themselves.
High-testosterone men look different from low-testosterone men whether or not they are smiling. In our Georgia State study, we found testosterone also related to the nonsmiling photographs Paula Williams took. The nonsmiling photographs were supposed to be neutral, not showing any particular expression. Among the women, when we looked at the pictures informally, the neutral pictures didn't suggest any difference between low and high testosterone. Among the men, however, those higher in testosterone looked more serious, tough, and hard. You can see this in the difference between the two men in Figure 7.2. We checked out our impressions by making two posters, one showing the twelve men highest in testosterone, and the other showing the twelve lowest. The posters did not identify which group was higher or lower in testosterone. Using three rating dimensionspower, activity, and goodnessdeveloped by psychologist Charles Osgood and his colleagues, we asked seventy-two college students to look at the posters and tell us which group looked more strong and dominant, more active and energetic, and more good and friendly. Of the seventy-two students, fifty-nine thought the high-testosterone group looked more strong and dominant, and fifty-one thought it looked more active and energetic.
 
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However, only eighteen thought the high-testosterone group looked more good and friendly. Fifty-four of the seventy-two students said that the low-testosterone group looked more good and friendly.
The high-testosterone group of nonsmiling men looked tough to us, but we had to study the pictures to figure out why. We saw no clear relationship between facial structure and testosterone level. Some researchers have suggested that testosterone shapes the faces of men and women differently, and there is a report, mentioned in Chapter 3, that men who are higher in testosterone have larger jaws.
8
The difference we saw between high-and low-testosterone men was not so much in facial structure but in expressiveness, which showed up especially around their eyes. High-testosterone men tended toward deadpan stares, while low-testosterone men were more expressive and generally more pleasant looking.
Related examples come from patients treated for prostate cancer. High testosterone is a risk factor for prostate cancer, and testosterone can make prostate cancer worse. Because of this, doctors treat prostate cancer patients with a testosterone-lowering medication. A side effect of lowered testosterone is that the men become more friendly, relaxed, sociable, and pleasant to deal with. They begin to smile more, and an aggressive and brusque edge to their behavior is reduced. They become more willing to engage in small talk.
Smiling promotes positive social relations because it is friendly and because it is responsive. People prefer responsive expressions to the deadpan stares we saw in our high-testosterone subjects. People want to see how others react when they open a gift, hear the punch line of a joke, or testify on the witness stand. Impassive faces bother everybody, even babies. A baby will look away if its mother stares at it with no expression or her face.
9
Writer Leslie Fiedler moved from the eastern United States to Montana, where he found impassive faces, and he wrote about the ''Montana Face," built "not for sociability or feeling, but for facing into the weather."
10
In 1924, the author of one of the first textbooks on social psychology wrote, "The 'close-up' of the actor's face in the 'movie,' and the savage humor of the comic supplement indulge our craving to get a reaction, ludicrous or tragic, but always intense, from every situation."
11
Letters to the editor are popular newspaper features because they let readers know how other people are reacting to news.
 
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Peggy Noonan, President Reagan's speechwriter, understood that people like personal reactions. She made sure that when Reagan made an announcement, he would say not just what was happening but also what he and Nancy thought about it.
12
"Getting to like You, Getting to Hope You like Me"
In
The King and I
, the musical version of the novel
Anna and the King of Siam
, the words "Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me" tell about the importance of getting along with others.
13
Smiling helps the process; it implies liking, and both smiling and liking are reciprocal. Smiles are contagious and sometimes automatic, as when we react to the wide, toothless grin of a baby. Smiling back is one of the earliest signs of sociability. Even infants smile back at people who smile at them.
14
It is interesting to note that while smiling is a universal expression for friendship and other happy feelings, there is no universal expression to indicate unhappiness. Anger, fear, sadness, and disgust all have their own individual expressions, but smiles can show friendship, amusement, pleasure, satisfaction, or happiness. With good feelings, it seems to be enough just to let others know that things are fine, and a smile does that.
Mary and I are convinced that our altered male dog, Bogart, can smile. His smile reaches up to his eyebrows and down to the tip of his wagging tail. He resembles a short-legged show horse as he trots along the sidewalk. He holds his head up and his tail up so high it looks like the plume on a drum major's hat. He stops to smile and wag at everyonepeople, dogs, cats, old friends, and strangers. People smile back and usually stop to speak to him when they meet him on the sidewalk. At stoplights people smile at him from their car windows. With his contagious doggy smile, Bogart traffics in happiness.
Friendly gestures are common in species in which individuals depend on each other for survival. In the office or on the street, people and animals avoid violence by showing others that they are not threatening. Most other dogs are friendly to Bogart because he is friendly and shows no desire to fight. Like Bogart, low-testosterone people let others know they have no desire to fight. They are quick to smile, and their manner evokes friendliness in others. Whether smiles are automatic or calculated, the effect is the same: the smile indicates that there is no threat.
 
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People smile to set a friendly tone for an encounter, thus minimizing the possibility that other people will be hostile. People, high or low in testosterone, who are at the receiving end of smiles usually smile back.
Smiles and friendliness are a part of the everyday social currency that people use to buy small favors and goodwill. They show that we are responsive, and they help us get things done. When people are smiling, their smiles stimulate their facial muscle nerves to send messages to emotional centers in their brains, telling these emotional centers that things are going well.
15
Both the person smiling and the person being smiled at feel better, and things go more smoothly. Smiles reduce hostility and make others like us. Low-testosterone people, who depend on cooperation from others, seem to use this strategy more often than high-testosterone people do. We all smile sometimes, but low-testosterone people smile most of all.
Smiles flatter and disarm people who might otherwise present a challenge. Smiling shows politeness, deference, and unaggressive intentions toward others, all of which are helpful to people who are "networking" their way to success. People who have reached positions of power smile less than those on their way up, maybe because they feel they don't have to ingratiate themselves with people who are paid to take orders. This may partly explain some contradictory findings on smiling, testosterone levels, and power. The two groups who smile least are people with high testosterone levels and people with power.
16
This is in spite of the fact that high-testosterone people do not, for the most part, have the power associated with high socioeconomic status in modern society.
A possible explanation for less smiling among high-status people is that most of those people are men. Women, who are less likely than men to be in high-status positions, smile more than men. There is strong social pressure on women to smile. A few years ago there was a poll reported on an Atlanta news program that showed "smiling" at the top of the list of what women did that men liked.
17
As the gap between men's and women's status in society continues to close, it will be interesting to see whether men smile more and/or women smile less. Mary has noticed that in recent fashion ads, the female models aren't smiling as much as they used to, and in some of the ads, the models seem to be glowering at prospective customers. It

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