The PS Department was honoured to welcome Dr Christian Burk from RWTH Aachen University to deliver a research cluster seminar entitled “When hormones Go Haywire: Discriminable Testosterone Responses to Social Challenge, Status Gain and Status Failure” on 15 Nov 2018.
The seminar summarized findings from two studies which distinguish between hormonal response patterns during experiences of social challenge, status gain, and failure. In the first study, salivary testosterone samples were collected from football fans while they were watching the matches of their favourite national team during the 2014 FIFA world cup to discriminate between reactions to experiences of challenge and status gain. The results show that testosterone levels of football fans went up after their team won and down if they lost. In the second study, subjects were asked to provide negative feedback to a student concerning his performance during an assessment session. The subjects reported that discriminative response patterns in cortisol and testosterone have arisen as a result of applying different emotion regulation strategies. Implications for research in emotion regulation as well as methodological issues were also discussed.
