TED Talks Daily - How testosterone and culture shape behavior | Carole K. Hooven

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Drawing on her research into the science of play, evolutionary biologist Carole K. Hooven delves into how testosterone impacts the body and brain, interacting with culture to create differences in human behavior — starting with why boys tend to prefer rougher play than girls.

TED Audio Collective attest to how they play among themselves very differently. I have all daughters, so when I'm around their boy classmates who are always chasing and tackling and sometimes playfully smacking each other, it always feels a little much. Evolutionary biologist Carol K. Hoeven researched why boys more than girls think it's more normal to tackle one another. And in her talk, she offers a way to explain why the sexes can be so different after the break. it's more normal to tackle one another. And in her talk, she offers a way to explain why the sexes can be so different after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel.

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Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. And now, our TED Talk of the day. As I look around the room, I can see, I think it's about half of you, have been exposed to high levels of a powerful chemical. And it is circulating in your blood as we speak. It's flowing freely through almost all of your cells, including neurons, where it affects whether they live or die

and how they grow and function. So this one chemical has profound and lasting effects, not just on your body, but also on your brain and behavior. This is testosterone. Both sexes have it, but men have much more than women, about 15 to 20 times more. And that is what explains why half of you are bigger and hairier

than the other half. On average, like all sex differences. For the last 20 years, I've been teaching about behavioral endocrinology, and this is a field that focuses on how hormones affect behavior and vice versa. And I'm particularly drawn to testosterone because it explains so much about why the sexes are different. But this area of science has become deeply entangled in the culture wars. And now, simply saying things that are obvious to most biologists, like that there are two reproductive classes, male and female, can land you in a heap of trouble. And I know because I've had some personal experience with this. And I also know that for some trans people,

their allies and others, that this language about the biology of sex can feel painful and that others are trying to weaponize the science. And here, I do not have the answers, but I can tell you that my students have really enjoyed learning about this science, partly because it helps them understand more about their own bodies and feelings, and they come away with a sense of more compassion for other people who are different from themselves. So I'm going to be talking about sex differences in play to try to convince you that this science is fascinating and it can help us all be better off. So first, I want to share the results from a joint project I started 15 years ago in which I grew two small organs

that secreted testosterone in my uterus. Those organs were attached to the new human I was growing in there. And when my son was growing inside of me, his tiny little testes were cranking out the testosterone. And at that early stage, it has some very big and important jobs to do. It has to masculinize the genitalia, and it has to ensure that everything is set up for sperm to be produced and delivered later on.

And it is also acting in the brain to motivate later behaviors like play fighting that are particularly beneficial to many male mammals. I never gave much thought to testosterone until I spent the better part of a year in western Uganda studying wild chimpanzees. And as I watched them living their lives, eating, playing, sleeping, fighting, having sex, I was really struck by our shared patterns of behavior. And particularly relevant to this talk was the fact that the little males did much more

play fighting than the little females. And these connections to us are so striking because we don't share any culture with chimpanzees, but we do share almost all of our genes and our hormones, including higher levels of testosterone in the males. And another pattern of behavior we share is that relative to females, male chimps spend much more time and energy competing for social dominance. And in chimps, this involves lots of fighting and also lots of threats and having a sense about when to challenge other males, but also when to submit and when to flee. And these males aren't fighting each other because they know that this is a great way to get more sex with fertile females. But males who behave this way do tend to pass on more

of their genes into future generations, and then their sons inherit similar propensities. So simply surviving without passing on one's genes is an evolutionary dead end. So in addition to survival skills, young animals like chimps also need to learn reproductive skills, and they do that through play. And our ancestors also practice these skills through play, and that legacy is reflected in our own kids. Now, not all boys have any desire to tackle their friends, and they would rather play house or dress up, and they should go for it. There are no hard rules in nature about how the sexes should play. When I was little, I used to wrestle with my three older brothers,

and I played little league baseball. But when I played with my girlfriends, like my best friend Ani, our play just didn't involve that kind of roughhousing that my son and his friends were into. Ani and I would do stuff like have tea and run class for our stuffed animals, the smallest of whom lived in a dollhouse. And for some reason, we loved playing office. I know. Crazy.

And we developed a lot of time filling out forms. Okay, I'm not kidding. Filling out forms, and I'm saying something publicly I've never said before, and I'm sorry, Ani. Filling out forms from junk mail, which we might have stolen from neighborhood mailboxes. And now, back to the episode. So wait, wait.

Am I really trying to tell you that knowing how to set up T for 5 or subscribe to National Geographic was supposed to make us better moms or whatever? Okay, not exactly. The specifics of play are always influenced by culture. But social play in general helps to develop skills that both sexes need, like how to resolve conflict, how to take turns, and even to figure out just what you can get away with.

But the sex specialization part, with more nurturing play in girls and more fighting play in boys, did likely evolve because these are skills that each sex needs to learn how to reproduce. Okay, that's a little evolutionary background. And now we can ask why scientists think that testosterone drives any of this. So our strongest evidence comes from experiments in other animals. So in females, in rats and monkeys anyway, jacking up testosterone during that early developmental

period causes rough play to increase dramatically. And in males, the reverse is true. Blocking testosterone during that same early period causes rough play to plummet. And in humans, of course, we can't go messing around with the kind of hormones that fetuses are exposed to, so we have to rely on less direct evidence. And we do have a wealth of studies on the play styles of girls who were exposed to unusually high testosterone levels in the womb. And their study after study shows that these girls do have an increased preference for rough play. So we still have so much to learn about how genes, hormones,

and culture all interact to produce sex differences in behavior. But all of the evidence we do have points in the same direction. And that is that differences in testosterone and evolutionary pressures explain why boys more than girls think it's a great idea to tackle their friends. Okay, so let's just assume that there is something natural about all this.

It's also natural to hook up with your ex. Okay? But that does not mean it's a good thing to do. And according to one mom, rough play in boys is also something we should probably reconsider. And she expressed this view in a parenting magazine. Quote, Letting my boys wrestle with each other only reinforces toxic masculinity, and I want no part of it.

Okay, so perhaps we could create more peaceful men by nipping it in the bud and just preventing them from practicing aggression when they were little. Okay, that's one idea, except the available evidence just doesn't support it. So for instance, depriving male rats of the kind of rough play they want leads to adult male rats who never learned how to manage their aggressive impulses. They actually end up more, rather than less, aggressive.

They fail to cooperate, they fail to respond appropriately to social cues, and ultimately, they fail to find mates. And having males like these around doesn't help anybody. So we are not rats, and we are not chimpanzees. For one thing, if you men were chimpanzees, you would be ripping each other to shreds. If you were meeting for the first time, that is. It would be mayhem.

And we humans have something no other animal has. And that is the ability to reflect on, talk about, and together to determine how we can control some of our more harmful impulses. And culture here makes all the difference. For example, men here in Canada are much less violent than our male neighbors over the southern border. Apart from hockey, apparently. And that is not because Canadian men have lost their testicles, or because Canadian boys don't wrestle each other. Instead, it's because of differences in the Canadian culture, perhaps in the gun laws, or in the the health care system or in levels of socioeconomic

inequality. So as a society, we lose a lot if we leave the science of sex out of the conversation or distort the facts. And that science strongly suggests that male typical play is not budding toxic masculinity. Instead, it is a healthy behavior that we should not discourage. So exaggerating only slightly, testosterone from those tiny... Sorry, tiny testes I grew 15 years ago made my son who he is today. And he is still a great kid,

even with his testosterone reaching record levels. And I want him and all of you to be captivated by the science of sex and to feel comfortable talking about it. And last, I hope that all our kids can just play more in real rather than virtual life and preferably outside. Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. Thank you. my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income,

I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. That was Carol K. Hoeven at TED 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family?

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