SOSC 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Robert Sapolsky, The Nice, The Criminals
2 Dec 2015
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Males are likely to be more aggressive than females. Proof: animals, pour out testosterone only during a very circumcised mating period. Testosterone isn"t a causative agent, it"s a permissive one. It doesn"t make you aggressive, it lets you be aggressive. We believe testosterone cause aggression because of physics envy: we believe in the physics scientist; when its actually a myth, monkeys in a group. Ranked 1-5: inject testosterone into monkey 3, monkey 3 becomes an ass to monkey 4 and 5, but he still respects monkey 1 and 2. Testosterone isn"t causing aggression, it"s bringing out the aggression that"s already there. Testosterone helps amygdala recover and send more signals. Remove testes, inject back 20% of normal testosterone, he has the same amount of aggression as pre-castration. Why are men more aggressive: pride, men are taught to be more aggressive since an early age. Women have 14% testosterone of what a male does.
