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ABSTRACT: In a study of possible links between testosterone and dominance, 119 men and 114 women provided saliva samples for testosterone assay and posed smiling and not smiling for portrait photographs. Expert judges viewing the photographs found smaller smiles among high than low testosterone men, with less zygomatic major (raising the corners of the mouth) and orbicularis oculi (raising the cheeks and crinkling around the corners of the eyes) muscle activity. Naive judges viewing individual photographs gave higher potency ratings to smiling high testosterone men than smiling low testosterone men. Naive judges viewing photographs grouped into high and low testosterone sets gave higher potency and lower goodness ratings to high than to low testosterone men, regardless of whether they were smiling. Among women, judges found only slight relationships between testosterone and facial appearance. The pattern among men of less smiling with higher testosterone levels fits with research linking testosterone to face-to-face dominance.
Research on testosterone and social behavior has emphasized antisocial activity, including criminal violence (Dabbs, Carr, Frady, & Riad, 1995), delinquency (Dabbs & Morris, 1990), and marital disturbance (Booth & Dabbs, 1993). It has also emphasized aggression (Archer, 1991), although testosterone is probably related more closely to interpersonal dominance than to aggression (Albert, Walsh, & Jonik, 1993; Mazur, 1985).
A problem with interpreting research findings in terms of dominance is that dominance itself is not clearly defined. Dominance among animals includes winning in competitive encounters, often through fighting. Successful fighting is associated with testosterone. When two male rhesus monkeys fight, the higher testosterone one usually wins, and winning further increases his testosterone level. The losing animal drops in testosterone (Bernstein, Rose, & Gordon, 1974). Human male athletes react similarly, increasing in testosterone before a contest and increasing further when winning (Booth, Shelley, Mazur, Tharp, & Kittok, 1989). Sports fans increase in testosterone when their champions win, in a kind of hormonal basking in reflected glory (Bernhardt, Dabbs, Fielden, & Lutter, 1996). In the present paper, we regard dominance as a quality that helps one win whatever one wants to win in one-on-one interpersonal encounters. The winning can come through using overt force or subtle body movements and expressions that evoke deference from others.
Social life has many moments of conflict, making it a...