Winning is one of the greatest feelings in the world. But did you know this can increase your testosterone levels?
Winning and competing is what separates the men from boys, avoiding competition will put you automatically in a losing position.
I have a work out partner and a cardio partner and with both the same thing happens.
The gym partner will try to improve his record or beat mine, he succeeded once and his self-esteem went up big time. It was funny to see him get a bit too confident.
My cardio partner and I always try to beat each other in sprinting and that’s great. Since we’re doing seven sprints we have to count and make a result afterward.
But not only sports can increase or decrease your testosterone. Even sports bets can have the same effect, winning big amounts of money gives you an overwhelming feeling.
Now before you go out to do sports bets or something else that can make you win; you must realize that if you lose your testosterone levels will drop.
I mention it because I know lots of people will forget the part where I said that it’ll drop your testosterone.
Even when your favorite sports team loses you’ll get the same drop in your testosterone as the players.
So if your favorite team sucks I suggest you pick another one for the sake of your testosterone. You can’t forget that testosterone is the men’s best friend.
No just kidding let’s take a look at how’s this possible. I’ve got multiple studies to show the relation between testosterone and winning. The best part is that it isn’t rocket science at all.
The science behind winning and testosterone
In the first study, the conclusion was that watching your favorite team or heroes win or lose had physiological consequences which result in changes beyond mood and self-esteem. They used two studies to prove this, in both studies, they measured testosterone through saliva samples. One group attended a game while the other group watched a sports game on television.
I guess they used both groups because in a stadium there’s a lot more atmosphere, but that’s just an assumption.
In the second study, they followed six university tennis players across six matches during their season. One of the first things they noticed was that testosterone rose just before most matches. Players who had the highest testosterone levels before a game had a bigger improvement in the mood before the game.
After the game the testosterone of the winners rose relative to losers, this was especially for winners with positive moods after their game. Those guys also tended to evaluate their performance highly.
You probably think it stops here but there is more. Winning or losing didn’t affect their moods and hormones for just one game but also for the following games. The winners had higher testosterone before there next match while the losers had lower testosterone.
There was no correlation between cortisol and the match result but top players had low cortisol which even declined during the season.
You could say that the results are consistent with the biosocial theory of status. The higher the status, the higher the testosterone.
The correlation between losing http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2606468and testosterone
We all know that stress will lower your testosterone and your mood. Once you’ve lost a game you’ll put more pressure (aka stress) on your shoulders. Once you keep losing you’re in a downward spiral that will affect your mood badly. (read the stress article here)
But you said that winning or losing money could affect your testosterone. Yes, it does!
Winning and money
In a study consisting of two experiments, male colleges student had to perform a task and won or lost $5 purely by luck. Both the experiments found that winners reported a more positive mood change than losers. In experiment 2 they compared the winner’s mood against a control group who didn’t win or lose money. Even here the winners had a much higher level of testosterone.
The levels of cortisol did not differ among the groups so this suggests that the hormone- behavior response pattern for winning and losing is specifically related to testosterone.
Now think about it, why was there no increase in cortisol in this study? Common think harder it’s really easy.
What’s the big difference between the second and the third group?
In contrast to the tennis players (mentioned earlier in this article), the participants of the third study couldn’t control the outcome. When you practice sports you can play a terrible game and you’ll know that’s the reason you’ve lost. When you lose something due to bad luck you know you can’t control this outcome. You’ll ease your mind and that’s why you won’t stress out.
The study that predicted a game outcome before the game
You can predict a game without just guessing? This is partially possible.
I guess this is the wet dream of every guy that does sports betting regularly. Too bad you don’t have the resources to do it, I guess you’ll have to rely on luck again.
This experiment looked at two hormones in particular testosterone and cortisol. The reason was that testosterone is a hormone of anabolism and other sports-related attributes like aggressiveness. Cortisol, on the other hand, is linked to catabolism and stress.
So like you probably know both cortisol and testosterone are elevated in response to exercise. Before a game the results are different. They found that absolute and relative testosterone was substantially elevated in athletes on the winning team. This was a week before the game. The winners had an elevation in testosterone that was about 27% higher than the losers. In this study, they’ll found that both teams had a reduction in cortisol.
The stock market and testosterone
The difference between men and women
An interesting article was written by John Coastes; he was originally a stock-market trader but he turned neuroscientist. How can hormones like testosterone and cortisol affect our ability to work, rest and play? That was his million-dollar question.
“I would see people get on a winning streak on the trading floor and go lunatic. It happened to me as well. For weeks, even months, you feel like the hero of the floor. Every trader who has made money knows what this feels like. You think you’re infallible.”
Even every guy who competes in a sport knows this feeling. You think you can defeat the whole world after scoring a winning goal.
The economist explained their behavior as rational and conscious but that not the case; they didn’t acknowledge the fact that chemical and electrical signals from the body affect how we take (financial) risks.
The first study Coates conducted was in the financial district of London. He used 17 traders from a mid-sized firm and followed them for two weeks.
These guys were high-frequency traders who held their bets. Those bets could go up to two billion dollars, which is a surreal amount of money. These trades were sometimes sitting in front of seven computer screens to follow the economic statistics.
The traders had to register their profit and loss statements twice a day and give saliva samples. From these samples, testosterone and cortisol were measured.
This was a groundbreaking study because this kind of fieldwork didn’t exist in finance.
The correlation between testosterone and earnings
When traders made above-average profit their testosterone levels went up. Just like in the third study there was a correlation between testosterone before the earnings. If a subject had high testosterone in the morning they’ll make high earnings.
Cortisol was affected by the volatility in the market, which is a measure of risk and uncertainty. Cortisol is more likely to increase in a market crash and, by taking the well-known risk aversion, this exaggerates the market’s downward movement.
Testosterone will likely rise, by increased risk-taking, to exaggerate the market’s upward movement.
The effect of winning on women
But what happens to women when they win?
Men generate about ten times more the amount testosterone than women. So women are less prone to the winner effect and the risk-taking that follows; they also have a less great stress response to risk-taking failures.
So yes men are more hormonal than women. Men are more attuned to high-frequency risk-taking due to male physiology. Women are not more risk-averse than men but they solely prefer to have more time and information before taking any risks.
So doesn’t this imply smaller profits? The opposite. When you look at the long term effect female investors outperform their male counterparts.
Now before anybody starts nagging about what the strongest gender I’ll suggest you rethink all your statements. There is no gender better than the other, there are just lots of differences. Men and women complement each other, in this way we counterbalance the tendencies.
I suggest you read the whole article for yourself because it’s really interesting. (read it here)
I’ve read it eight times to be sure I would memorize the most important parts.
conclusion
You can put it simplistically: cortisol will lead to irrational pessimism while testosterone will lead to irrational exuberance. If you look deeper you’ll notice that most of our decisions are manipulated by signals from the body and aren’t conscious processes like most people assume.
I’m closing off with a little reminder: behind every great man stands a strong woman. I realize this now more than ever. So instead of going to a club scene to score some girl with your game, you better look for one with other norms and values. A girl that makes sure you’ll go for your goals and smash the shit out of them. I’ll stop now being melodramatic.
I told you that this blog wasn’t like all the others and I didn’t lie. (read here why it’s completely different)
Till next time
Alex
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