TESTOSTERONE AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: PHASE ONE

该项目是一系列计划研究中的第一阶段。 唾液中睾酮浓度与反社会和 暴力行为。到目前为止，将血浆睾丸素与 攻击性、冲动和反社会行为产生了 相互矛盾的结果表明，睾丸素的影响可能是 非常具体。例如，不同的研究表明，血清 睾丸激素与挑衅但不是无端攻击有关 青少年犯罪史，但不是成人犯罪史。几乎没有什么 来自这些研究的关于睾丸素变化多少的信息 随着时间的推移，是什么导致了这些变化，它们如何影响攻击性 行为，以及它们可能如何使描述一个 睾丸激素长期偏高或偏低的人。 目前的项目探索唾液的用途，而不是 血清睾酮测定在未来反社会研究中的应用 和暴力行为。唾液提供了一种几乎纯粹的测量 “游离”的睾丸素，而血清提供了一种测量游离+的方法。 被绑住了。唾液可以在没有医疗帮助的情况下很容易地收集， 使研究大量的学科成为可能 不同的田间条件，并采取反复的措施 时间段从几分钟到几年不等。初步 研究表明唾液中的睾丸素与犯罪暴力有关 男性和女性囚犯和人格测量 在大学生中。 这个项目将检查周期性(昼夜节律，月经， 一年一次)，以便控制周期可能引入的误差 转化为睾丸激素个体差异的衡量标准，并 确定一天中获得措施的最佳时间。它还将 检查随机变异引起的睾丸激素的变化，寿命 六个月内的事件，以及实验测试 条件。关于犯罪行为的初步相关数据 将被收集，但重点将是开发协议 用来测量唾液中睾丸激素的个体差异。

This project represents phase one in a planned series of studies relating saliva testosterone concentrations to antisocial and violent behavior. To date, studies relating plasma testosterone to aggressive, impulsive, and antisocial behavior have produce conflicting results and suggest the effects of testosterone may be very specific. For example, different studies show serum testosterone related to provoked but not unprovoked aggression and to adolescent but not adult criminal history. There is little information from these studies on how much testosterone changes over time, what causes the changes, how they affect aggressive behavior, and how they might make it difficult to characterize a person as chronically high or low in testosterone. The present project explores the utility of saliva rather than serum measures of testosterone in future research on antisocial and violent behavior. Saliva provides a virtually pure measure of "free" testosterone, while serum provides a measure of free plus bound. Saliva can be collected easily with no medical assistance, making it possible to study large numbers of subjects under diverse field conditions and to take repeated measures over periods of time ranging from minutes to years. Preliminary studies show saliva testosterone related to criminal violence in both male and female prison inmates and to personality measures in college students. This project will examine cyclicity (circadian, menstrual, circannual) in order to control for error that cycles can introduce into measures of individual differences in testosterone and to determine the best time of day to obtain measures. It will also examine changes in testosterone due to random variation, life events over a six month period, and experimental testing conditions. Preliminary correlative data on delinquent behavior will be collected, but the focus will be upon developing protocols for measuring individual differences in saliva testosterone.