Could watching Hillary Clinton's DNC speech raise (or lower) your testosterone? Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, posited just this question and yesterday a blogger named Brendon Marotta investigated this claim. While I am not especially interested in politics or political speeches, I had no idea that what our eyes take in could significantly impact our hormone levels, though in retrospect I don't know why it comes as a surprise.

The Senses

Our hormone levels certainly respond to our environment, and our body perceives our environment through our sensory organs. While our eyes are only one sensory organ (well two technically), they are certainly an important one and given the level of sophistication of our eyes, as well as their use in activities which are uniquely human like advanced pattern recognition, it would make sense that our eyes may even have an out-sized influence on our physical states. Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that humans acquire massive amounts of information from one another's faces. Even the mouth, what we use to generate sounds which themselves transmit information, is located on the face and the face itself is used to add information to speech. Take for example the phrase, "Fuck off!" said with a smile or said with a grimace. The same words, very different information and all based on what is being perceived with the eyes.

The Study

But Marotta did far more than merely theorize. He found a study. Apparently there actually is evidence for these claims. He found a University of Michigan (my alma mater - Go Blue) study which discovered that romantic comedies lowered men's testosterone levels but didn't affect women's. That same study found that the scene in which Michael Corleone dominates the mafia in The Godfather II had three different effects depending on the individual. On average it raised men's testosterone levels (no real surprise there). It actually had the opposite effect on high testosterone women, lowering their testosterone level, as if making them more feminine. Finally, people with low testosterone simply felt deeply uncomfortable, as if they were betas recognizing the ascension of the alpha. Mind you, I don't necessarily believe in this Alpha v. Beta stuff, but it is interesting to see how far that theory can be pushed.

Winning v. Losing

Marotta claims that what this centers around is "winning." If you identify with Corleone, you view this event as a "win for your team" and your body responds by generating more testosterone, presumably so that you are equipped to maintain your high-status position within the tribe. If you do not view this as a win for your team, for example if you are a high testosterone woman, your body seems to respond by lowering your testosterone. Let me be clear, this is all entirely theoretical. I am not saying that women can't identify with Corleone or that women can't be leaders. What Marotta and I are saying is "if a high testosterone woman does not identify with Corleone then perhaps this explains the corresponding decrease in testosterone levels." These are hypotheticals and theories, nothing more.

Based on this theory, Marotta argues that if you are a man and Hillary positions herself as "Team Woman" (to quote Marotta) then any perceived victory for Hillary will be perceived as a win for team woman, of which you are not a part, in which case your testosterone levels will go down assuming this theory is correct.

The Real Lesson

In the end Marotta pulls it all together rather nicely by pointing out that the real lesson here is to be careful about who you identify with because you actually form a bond with them. Though Marotta doesn't discuss this, what he is referring to is probably how our body uses what's called "mirror neurons." Mirror neurons seem to be what give primates the ability to empathize with one another by causing our physical states to "sync with" the physical states we perceive in other members of our species. Perhaps when we identify with someone, when we view them as part of what anthropologists refer to as our "ingroup," our mirror neurons blindly sync our physical states with theirs and in so doing cause us to "feel" their losses and their wins as if they were our own.

But let's test this out. How does this image make you feel?

Would it be paranoid to think that the logo was designed so that the arrow would be subliminally pointing to her vagina when placed on a podium?

There's plenty more in Marotta's post which you can check out here: Can movies change your testosterone levels? I highlighted and annoted it using genius.it so you can see the parts I found most interesting along with some comments.

Here's the U of M study: Movies Can Raise Or Lower Hormone Levels