They interviewed the author on NPR and it was compelling audio (could not find it with a basic search). The thing which stuck out was his report that after he started taking the testosterone his personality and behavior and world view all changed very radically. He would be walking down crowded city sidewalks and intentionally bump into guys and behave in other defiant and challenging manners which were unimaginable to him before he started the therapy when still a bio woman.
I heard that FtM transsexuals tend to be much more aggressive than (“normal”) males, because unlike men they aren’t used to living with those hormones since they were kids.
Part of the problem here is that even if testosterone had absolutely no effect on aggression at all, we would still see people taking testosterone injections acting more aggressive. Why? Because the common belief is that testosterone will make you more aggressive. Give them saline and tell them it’s testosterone and they’ll start bumping people in the street as well.
To test whether there is an actual effect going on here, they’d need to look at what how two different groups of FtM transsexuals respond when one is placed on a placebo, and one given testosterone. The article linked to by Gwern discusses this effect of perception on behavior:
Folk wisdom holds
that testosterone causes antisocial, egoistic, or even aggressive behaviors in humans. However, the correlational
studies discussed above already suggest that this simple
folk view probably requires revision [34,56]. A recent placebo-controlled testosterone administration study found
support for the idea that the testosterone–aggression link
might be based upon ‘folk’ views: individuals given placebo
who believed they had been given testosterone showed less
fair bargaining offers compared with those who believed
that they had received placebo, thus confirming people’s
stereotypes about the behavioral effects of testosterone.
More importantly, however, when statistically controlling
for this belief of treatment assignment, one acute dose of
testosterone in women increased the fairness of proposers’
bargaining offers in an ultimatum game [13] (Figure 3).
It reminds me of that article written by a female-to-male transsexual about the effects of introducing testosterone to his body. He specifically mentioned that most activities (especially sex) had become obscenely more focused on the goal or end-result, and how the rest of the journey didn’t matter so much. I can probably find it again if anyone’s interested.
http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/lipbp/testosterone_and_social_functioning/c2t254p
The most interesting info on this topic I have seen is a trans guy’s biography:
Becoming a Visible Man.
They interviewed the author on NPR and it was compelling audio (could not find it with a basic search). The thing which stuck out was his report that after he started taking the testosterone his personality and behavior and world view all changed very radically. He would be walking down crowded city sidewalks and intentionally bump into guys and behave in other defiant and challenging manners which were unimaginable to him before he started the therapy when still a bio woman.
I heard that FtM transsexuals tend to be much more aggressive than (“normal”) males, because unlike men they aren’t used to living with those hormones since they were kids.
Part of the problem here is that even if testosterone had absolutely no effect on aggression at all, we would still see people taking testosterone injections acting more aggressive. Why? Because the common belief is that testosterone will make you more aggressive. Give them saline and tell them it’s testosterone and they’ll start bumping people in the street as well.
To test whether there is an actual effect going on here, they’d need to look at what how two different groups of FtM transsexuals respond when one is placed on a placebo, and one given testosterone. The article linked to by Gwern discusses this effect of perception on behavior:
From the Reddit discussion:
linking to http://tranifesto.com/2010/06/30/testosterone-and-sex-drive-my-second-adolescence/ - interesting indeed.