Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (43 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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writing about testosterone, but his theory applies to it. Putting things in economic terms, he says that in order for people to benefit from living in a civilized world, they have to pay their share. However, says Simon, people actually pay a little more than their share due to a pair of traits, which he calls "bounded rationality" and "docility," that work together toward that end. Bounded rationality comes into play when people are unable to figure out all the consequences of their actions. This is especially true in an emergency, when someone cries out for help and there is no time to think. Working in tandem with bounded rationality, docility means that people follow rules and support social values; they respond to calls for help. Being docile keeps people from having to figure out everything for themselves, but occasionally it makes them act against their self-interest. It is when they act against their self-interest that they are paying the altruism tax.
All civilized people must be docile to some extent, even high-testosterone people. Although high-testosterone people may be a little less docile than average, it is tempting to say that what they lack in docility they more than make up for with bounded rationality. There are two characteristics of high-testosterone people that should reinforce the effects of bounded rationality, making them willing to pay the heavy heroic altruism tax. The first is their focused attention, and the second is their quick action.
Testosterone increases focus, as indicated by the animal studies of persistence and as reported by the Dutch sex-change patient described in Chapter 3.
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Focused attention makes people more likely to take risks without noticing that others are holding back. Testosterone is like the blinders that keep horses and mules from being frightened or distracted by things around them. A friend of mine who raises horses stated it this way: "When you put blinders on them, they go forward better."
Testosterone facilitates quick action and increases one's readiness to act. In emergencies, most people look to see what others are doing; they wait for someone else to help, and often as a result no one helps. A person who is more willing to act needs less guidance from others. In 1971, psychologist Bibb Latané and I had our students do a study on helping. Each student got on an elevator with other people and dropped a handful of pencils and waited to see who would help pick them up.
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Among the hundreds of people they observed, one man of
 
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action was quick enough to see the pencils start to fall and grab them before they hit the floor. He saw what needed to be done, and he did it in a hurry. Whether or not grabbing pencils in midair reflects a penchant for heroic altruism, I can't say for sure, but I believe the man who did it has a better chance at it than the people who didn't.
Action also counts in long-term helping. In 1961, David Rosenhan, who was studying altruism, interviewed a group of civil rights activists. Some were more fully committed to the civil rights movement than others.
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Fully committed activists had done more, including going on more freedom rides in the South, but when they were interviewed, they talked less about what they had done. Partially committed activists had done less, but they talked more. Their talk drifted from what they had done to the philosophy of civil rights. Their insights were good, but thinking so much seemed to interfere with their acting. The action orientation of high-testosterone individuals makes it easier for them to help where others hold back. Perhaps the extra risk works out to their advantage in the long run, keeping them from becoming extinct, because potential mates find their action attractive and thrilling.
The Mixed Values of Love and War
Testosterone provides the energy for extreme behavior, but something more is needed to predict whether the behavior will be good, bad, or both. Testosterone is closely tied to autonomy, and autonomy can lead toward selfishness or toward a concern with justice. Among the military veterans in Chapter 4, we found testosterone related to psychopathy, the tendency to disregard others and treat them in careless and harmful ways.
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The psychologist Scott Lilienfeld finds that psychopathic people are often helpful. He believes this is because they tend to be fearless, and fearless people feel free to do whatever they want. Fearlessness and high testosterone often go together, with fearlessness making it easier for a high-testosterone person either to mistreat others or to help them. If we want to know whether fearless people will be helpful or harmful, we need to know the values that motivate them.
Some personality traits are linked directly to testosterone. For example, high-testosterone people have an affinity for confrontation; they are quick to fight, and sometimes they help another person by
 
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fighting; they like action and are willing to take risks, which makes them likely to help in emergencies. High-testosterone delinquent youths say that seeing a person in authority pick on another person makes them very angry. Disturbed by the unfairness of what they see, both boys and girls who are high in testosterone might strike out to help a person who is being picked on.
I call Terry Banks, the student who did most of the work on our delinquency study, "the strobe light of my life." Banks was an excellent researcher and a high-testosterone woman who got into fights. She had to go to the penitentiary after one fight with a policeman over a drug bust, but mostly she got into fights to help her friends. Banks ended up with a broken arm after trying to protect a friend from an abusive boyfriend. During the time she was my student, she worked nights as a dancer at a local club. Once, after missing several days at school, she explained, "I had to go to court about a fight I got into. One of the girls at the club was picking on a friend of mine, and I made her stop. I slammed her head into the locker about nine times. She was too drunk to remember what happened, though, so the judge threw the case out."
Banks blurred the line between violence and heroic altruism. Another woman friend of mine, whose violent and heroic tendencies are more subdued, also dislikes bullies. Her testosterone is a little on the high side, and she suspects it was more so when she was younger. Once, when she was in grade school, a group of boys her age were teasing little girls and pulling up their dresses. My friend chased down one of the boys, wrestled him to the ground, and pulled off his pants.
Sometimes it is hard to tell if people who go to the aid of the underdog are more concerned about helping victims or punishing bullies. A study of Good Samaritans in California who tried to help crime victims indicated that many of them were more interested in getting the perpetrator than in helping victims. For example:
 . . . a motorist saw a truck strike a pedestrian and then drive away. The motorist gave chase and forced the hit-and-run driver to the side of the road. He then took out a shotgun he had in his car and held the truck driver at gunpoint until the police arrived. Meanwhile, the woman who had been hit by the truck was left lying in the road and died an hour later in the hospital.
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Readiness to fight and punish bullies is related to upbringing and to high levels of testosterone. Older fighters are like older trial lawyers; they rely on skills they acquired when they were younger and higher in testosterone. That seems to be the case with my friend David, a survivor of prostate cancer, the scourge of high-testosterone men. He's eighty years old, and he's been taking testosterone-lowering drugs for eleven years. The drugs make him more friendly and sociable than he used to be, but they didn't make him stop fighting.
He was in his mid-seventies the last time he got into a fight. He was most likely to fight when somebody picked on someone he was close to, but sometimes he just liked to fight. His last fight was at a service station and pecan stand in Valdosta, Georgia. He filled up his car with gas and stayed by the pump waiting for his wife, who was buying pecans. The man behind him became impatient, shouted for David to move, and made an obscene gesture. Instead of moving, David challenged the man to fight. The man, who was middle-aged and overweight, wanted to fight, too. He got out of his car, took a swing at David, and missed. By the time the station owner and another customer stopped the fight, the man had swung and missed several times and David had knocked him down once. David's wife thwarted his efforts to arrange a rematch.
David's wife points out that although retired professional men don't usually get into fights, David grew up in a rough neighborhood and came from a tough family. David's older brother was a union organizer, and his father was a federal agent during Prohibition. David also grew up with strong altruistic feelings and sided with the underdogs, so much so that when he was fifteen, he wanted to fight for democracy against Fascist bullies in the Spanish Civil War. He tried to convince his brother that they should join up and go to Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but his brother talked him out of it. David got his chance to fight Fascist bullies in Italy during World War II, and he fondly remembers his wartime adventures, including the discomforts and the narrow escapes. Later, as a federal employee, his job took him south to deal with racial discrimination in housing.
Audie Murphy, the war hero and actor mentioned in previous chapters, liked to fight. He was famous for loyalty to his men, and he repeatedly risked his life for them. Murphy was also famous for his ability to track down and kill enemy snipers. He killed 241 men in face-to-face
 
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combat in fighting that moved across Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany. When the war was over, he became a movie star and was frequently involved in troubles associated with women, gambling, fighting, addiction, and the IRS. His training and temperament put him at odds with peace and civilian life.
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Murphy was a complex mixture of heroic altruism, violence, and delinquency, and he, like others who share those characteristics with him, was often in the news. Psychologist David Lykken, author of
The Antisocial Personalities
, noticed news items about heroic criminals and criminal heroes so often that he began to save clippings about them. Among his clippings are stories about a most decorated police detective convicted of armed robbery, a Medal of Honor winner convicted of forgery, a Good Citizenship Award winner charged with attempted murder, and a gangster turned humanitarian. I read about another honored policeman arrested for murder and another Medal of Honor winner arrested for robbing a liquor store. Soldiers decorated for heroism often have criminal records, and police officers decorated for bravery have often been disciplined for use of excessive force. An investigation of the Los Angeles police department found that officers who got into the most trouble had good performance evaluations.
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A Frenchman, who was a former armed robber, was director of a well-run refugee camp in Albania during the 1999 Kosovo war.
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A man moved by religious convictions to save unborn children killed an abortion doctor in Florida. Soldiers pray for God to help them kill the enemy, and killing the enemy is a way of helping their friends. Whether people are heroic and law-abiding or heroic and delinquent depends largely on circumstance, motivation, and values.
Values Supporting Heroic Altruism
Some values that give people the motivation they need to perform acts of heroic altruism come from initiations (described in the next chapter), which let them know how to act as members of the group. Initiations are less important now than in primitive times, but they still affect us. Marine boot camp and street gang initiations produce rough values, which include personal defense and the protection of comrades. Depending on individual character and circumstances, rough values can support criminal or heroic behavior or both.

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