{"id":14647,"date":"2009-10-27T14:40:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T19:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=14647"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:08:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:08:07","slug":"social-influences-on-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/10\/27\/social-influences-on-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Influences on Biology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The nature\/nurture debate that posits a competition between biological and social\/cultural influences on human behavior\u00a0 is alive and well in the mass media.\u00a0 But scholars largely agree that culture and biology interact; biological realities shape our social world, but our social world also shapes our biologies.<\/p>\n<p>One strain of research demonstrating this has shown that men&#8217;s testosterone levels (associated with feelings of well-being) rise and drop in response to social (and socially constructed) cues.\u00a0 For example, the testosterone levels of the winner of a tennis match will rise after his win, while his opponent will see his levels go down.\u00a0 Similarly, measuring men&#8217;s testosterone levels won&#8217;t tell you which men walking down the sidewalk will enter a strip club, but the men leaving the strip club will have higher testosterone levels than the men who passed it by.<\/p>\n<p>Matt C. alerted me to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2009-10\/du-peo102009.php#\" target=\"_blank\">a test of this phenomenon using the Presidential election<\/a>.\u00a0 There was a slight drop in testosterone levels for men who voted for Obama (normal because men&#8217;s testosterone levels tend to drop at night), but a dramatic drop for men who voted for McCain or the Libertarian candidate, Barr.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14649\" title=\"17630_web\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/10\/17630_web.jpg\" alt=\"17630_web\" width=\"400\" height=\"364\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it, biological responses to social cues.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nature\/nurture debate that posits a competition between biological and social\/cultural influences on human behavior\u00a0 is alive and well in the mass media.\u00a0 But scholars largely agree that culture and biology interact; biological realities shape our social world, but our social world also shapes our biologies. One strain of research demonstrating this has shown that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[664,218,23692,85,238],"class_list":["post-14647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biology","tag-bodies","tag-gender-biology","tag-politics","tag-election-2008"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14647"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67794,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14647\/revisions\/67794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}