Threat perception and familiarity moderate the androgen response to competition in women

Social interactions elicit androgen responses whose function has been posited to be the adjustment of androgen-dependent behaviors to social context. The activation of this androgen response is known to be mediated and moderated by psychological factors. In this study we tested the hypothesis that the testosterone (T) changes after a competition are not simply related to its outcome, but rather to the way the subject evaluates the event. In particular we tested two evaluative dimensions of a social interaction: familiarity with the opponent and the subjective evaluation of the outcome as threat or challenge. Challenge/threat occurs in goal relevant situations and represent different motivational states arising from the individuals’ subjective evaluation of the interplay between the task demands and coping resources possessed. For challenge the coping resources exceed the task demands, while threat represents a state where coping resources are insufficient to meet the task demands. In this experiment women competed in pairs, against a same sex opponent using the number tracking test as a competitive task. Losers appraised the competition outcome as more threatening than winners, and displayed higher post-competition T levels than winners. No differences were found either for cortisol (C) or for dehydroepiandrosterone. Threat, familiarity with the opponent and T response were associated only in the loser condition. Moderation analysis suggests that for the women that lost the competition the effect of threat on T is moderated by familiarity with the opponent.