Role of hormones in human behaviour

Question 1

What are hormones?

Answer 1

Chemical substances that circulate in the bloodstream and only affect target organs. They are produced by glands in large quantities but disappear quickly. Their effects are very powerful and widespread in the body.

Question 2

Where are hormones secreted from?

Answer 2

Endocrine glands.

Question 3

What are hormones transported around the body in?

Answer 3

blooooooood ewwww

Question 4

What do hormones target?

Answer 4

Target organs or other glands

Question 5

Who are more aggressive females or males? And why?

Answer 5

Males. Due to testosterone

Question 6

What is the role of testosterone?

Answer 6

It has a role in regulating social behaviour through its influence on areas of the brain implicated in aggression

Question 7

What evidence is there that testosterone has a role in effecting aggression?

Answer 7

Giammanco- mice and Dolan- prisons

Question 8

Where is cortisol secreted from?

Answer 8

The adrenal glands

Question 9

What is the role of cortisol?

Answer 9

To help the body deal with the effects of stress.

Question 10

What is the hypothesis called that suggests that there is an interaction between the systems responsible for regulating aggression and the stress response?

Answer 10

Dual-hormone hypothesis

Question 11

Can female aggressive behaviour still be enhanced by testosterone?

Answer 11

Although levels in females are lower than males aggressive behaviour can still be enhanced by this hormone

Question 12

How did Dabbs and Hargrove prove a correlation between testosterone and its effects on females?

Answer 12

Measured testosterone in the saliva of 87 female inmates of a maximum security prison. They foun that the degree of criminal violence used by these women was positively correlated with testosterone levels. Testosterone also correlated with the extent of the women’s aggressive dominance within the prison

Question 13

Why is it hard to measure testosterone levels?

Answer 13

Partly because the concepts of testosterone level is more complex. Psychologists distinguish between baseline and fluctuating testosterone. Baseline is a person’s usual level of testosterone and is relatively stable across days, weeks and even months. But testosterone also fluctuates from one social encounter to another. Carre argue that baseline testosterone plays a less important role in human aggression that it does in animals. However baseline is oftne used in human research