The climate change sickness discussed in the previous post is IMV a symptom of a more general cultural disease. Another symptom of that disease is the fashion for anti-male statements and behaviors. As often happens such views are based on junk science.

New scientific evidence refutes the preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric, and risky behavior. . .

Popular scientific literature, art, and the media have been attributing the roll of aggression to the arguably best known sexual hormone for decades. Research appeared to confirm this – the castration of male rodents evidently led to a reduction in combativeness among the animals. The prejudice thus grew over decades that testosterone causes aggressive, risky, and egocentric behavior. The inference from these experiments with animals that testosterone produces the same effects in humans has proven to be false . . .

Instead, the findings suggest that the hormone increases the sensitivity for status. For animal species with relatively simple social systems, an increased awareness for status may express itself in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behavior secures status, and not aggression," surmises study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "The interplay between testosterone and the socially differentiated environment of humans, and not testosterone itself, probably causes fair or aggressive behavior".

Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions. Economist Michael Naef states: "It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society where qualities and manners of behavior are increasingly traced to biological causes and thereby partly legitimated, this should make us sit up and take notice." The study clearly demonstrates the influence of both social as well as biological factors on human behavior.

Humans are complex. Their primal objectives such as status seeking may be simply described, but status in a human society is not a simple thing. The simple word masks the true complexity. It is fascinating that false beliefs about human biology and culture are shown to degrade behavior.