Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (30 page)

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to present an overall model showing the links between testosterone and reproductive success. The model includes ideas about evolution and qualities associated with testosterone. It shows how people's biology leads them along conflicting directions, toward pair bonding and fidelity on the one hand, and tournaments and philandery on the other.

The model assumes that the underlying function of sex is to carry life into future generations. Feelings of love and happiness are wonderful, and we seek and enjoy them, but they are a side show. Reproduction is the main event. People who have offspring pass along their genes to the next generation, and the genes of people who have no offspring die out. Evolution selects genes and traits that produce children who in turn produce grandchildren and great-grandchildren, continuing indefinitely. Thriving offspring are the obvious key to survival across the generations.

This model, shown in Figure 5.2, focuses on the role of testosterone in men. The arrows show testosterone leading to activities and behaviors that in turn lead to reproductive success. Testosterone contributes directly to sexual activity and the qualities in Chapter 3 that define a macho kind of dominancesimple thought and action, spatial skill, strength, sexual activity, panache, and roguery.

Dominance is central to the model, and it has two broad effects. First, it increases the likelihood of having children. Dominance makes it easier for a man to find a mate, because it makes him more competitive, more attractive to females, and better able to influence women through either charm or coercion. Dominant men are also more likely to have resources that make life easier and safer for their families, increasing the families' chances for survival. At the same time, however, dominance brings rambunctiousness, independence, and a tendency to wander off to compete with other men and pursue other women, leaving the original family at risk and decreasing its chances of survival. Pair bonding and tournament strategies differ in their relative emphasis on bringing resources and wandering. A pair-bonding man invests everything in one mate and her children, and he stays close to home. A tournament man invests a little in a mate and her children, then wanders off in pursuits that will lead to other mates, in each of whom he also invests only a little. With higher testosterone levels, males are inclined more toward wandering and less toward being faithful providers. Following the discussion

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of the previous few paragraphs, high-testosterone men display more tournament activity and less pair-bonding activity and support, which makes it more likely that they will have children but less likely that these children will survive to produce grandchildren. Testosterone levels in the population as a whole are held to a generally medium level across the generations by the competing benefits of having offspring and supporting them.

Figure 5.2
Testosterone and reproductive success. The model shows testosterone
contributing to and interfering with reproductive success. Testosterone leads
toward being dominant and having children and grandchildren, but it also
leads toward restlessness that interferes with responsible parenthood.
Evolutionary success requires that men attract women, father children, and
give the children enough support for them to grow up and have children of
their own. Too little testosterone interferes with having children, and too
much interferes with giving support.

The model shows that testosterone is a mixed blessing in raising a family. It also suggests that there is room for different kinds of behavior. Every population has pair-bonding men and tournament men, and both types of men are successful in reproducing. The strategy a man uses will depend partly on his testosterone level. There is a point in the population where men teeter between pair bonding and wandering off to a tournament. If too many men bring resources, women become less aware of the unreliability of wandering males, and wandering males gain an advantage. If too many men wander, women begin to demand commitments, and pair-bonding males gain an advantage. The end result is a balance that keeps testosterone from rising too high or falling too low. Richard Dawkins describes processes like this in his book
The Selfish Gene
.
⁶⁰

''But," you might say, "where's the love? Even if love is a side show,

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doesn't it count? I think the model is too mechanical, too cold and calculating. It has no romance. There must be something else." The answer is, yes, of course, there is something else. There is love, and there are many other things, all of which are important. In the real life of individuals, more is involved than just the lines and arrows of the model. One thing or another may be more important for different people in different settings. Airline pilots and traveling salesmen, by the nature of their work, wander more than farmers. Resources matter more in harsh northern climates, where offspring will die without those extra resources to protect them from the cold.
⁶¹Wandering is more common in societies where other people can take care of children one leaves behind. Testosterone, and the kind of dominance that comes with it, is not much needed by men who have the power of money or social position.

Variations in how well a model fits occur in all sciences, whether the model deals with human behavior or atomic forces. A model is good not because it contains everything, but because it provides a useful and simplified view. Unlike art, which deals with more reality than we are accustomed to in everyday life, science deals with less reality than we are accustomed to.
⁶²Art makes real life epic, as
Gone with the Wind
sets Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, Ashley, and all their complicated passions to music and adds Technicolor. Science would put these characters on a chart and compare them to a control group. Science is good at abstracting things, tearing them down and reducing them to their bare essentials. In doing this, it loses the richness of individual cases, but it gains the vision to see underlying relations more clearly. The model in Figure 5.2 points to aspects of the human social world where testosterone, mate relations, and reproductive success come together. The model outlines some of the ordinary processes behind the apparent magic of love and some of the tricks and illusions that make us keep doing what our ancestors didfinding mates, establishing relationships, and having offspring who survive and repeat the pattern in the next generation.

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6
Earning a Living

At the Bar

Colleen Heusel worked for me as a student assistant. She was called for jury duty, where she met Bruce Harvey, a well-known Atlanta lawyer. Colleen didn't know that he'd been a subject in a Georgia State University study written up in a
New York Times
column on lawyers and testosterone.
¹I knew him from that study, and before that I knew his wife, Paige, who was a heroine in my neighborhood. She was a volunteer tree climber for Roadbusters, a group that helped stop the Georgia Department of Transportation from building a freeway through a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. Before the courts stopped the project, DOT tree cutters came to the park, and Paige was among the protesters in the trees. Mary and I, who were among the Roadbuster ground troops, watched the men cut down a large dogwood tree as Paige bravely hung on to its upper branches.

Later, a GSU student recruited Bruce to participate in our lawyer study. Knowing he was Paige's husband predisposed me to think he was a good person, but it took Colleen a while to see his positive qualities. She wrote about her jury duty experience as follows:


The day before I reported for jury duty, my boyfriend and I were talking about a lawyer we'd seen a lot on the news. We didn't know his name. We called him "that sleazy lawyer with the braid who's on TV all the time." His long hair and contrived look were very unappealing. We saw him as a megalomaniac

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who took on sensational cases to satisfy his ego. It seemed his clients were consistently the dregs of society.


When I reported to court, the clerk assigned me to the pool for a child molestation case. The accused was fat, had greasy hair, a mustache, and looked very nervous and guilty. As soon as I saw him and heard the charges, I made up my mind he was guilty. Then his lawyers walked in, and there he was, the TV lawyer guy with the braid.

His name was Bruce Harvey. He was tall, slim, and muscular, and his braid was long and grey. His hands were tattooed, and he was wearing a lavender cotton suit, a flashy-but-tasteful tie, and an earring. The associate lawyer was shorter and more subdued, but he also had a ponytail and an earring. "Just perfect," I thought smugly. "This will be entertaining and I'll be out quickly." I planned to tell the judge I had a busy week at school and didn't have time for jury duty.


Much to my dismay, the judge thought my civic duty was more important than school, and I was stuck until they picked a jury. I hoped I wouldn't be on it.