The Hormone of Competition . . .

David Berreby on October 22, 2009, 11:16 AM

After a soccer match, the losers' testosterone levels will probably be lower than the winners' (though it may be that this won't be so if the winners think their victory was a fluke). And among the spectators, even fans of the losers will experience a testosterone drop.

Whatever this phenomenon means, it's reasonable to wonder if it applies to politics as well. According to this study, it does: male McCain voters' testosterone levels went down after their loss was announced last Election Day, while Obama men's hormone levels stayed stable.

Tags: politics, social psychology, sports, unconscious behavior

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In markets, medicine, justice, politics, psychology, and economics, "Rational Man" is dead. As the science of human behavior enters the post-rational era, we no longer think of ourselves as cool calculators in pursuit of our objective self-interest. Mind Matters is about this change and its effects on how we live. It's about the reasons people perceive, feel, think, and act as they do, and the gaps between what we think we're doing and what research says we're doing. Most importantly, it's about how this sea change affects the institutions we live by: courts, hospitals, governments, stock markets and other entities that still run on the presumption that people act rationally.