Why your Testosterone is so Low

the bad thing about television is that everybody you see on television is doing something better than what you're doing if you look at the increase in brain size leading to the advent of humans you'll notice that brain size suddenly started to increase rapidly around 2 million years ago it's a bit of a mystery what we exactly needed all that brain power for though british anthropologist robin dunbar proposes that the brain grew so large to keep up with the complex social demands put on the brain social dynamics are incredibly important to primates and people of course if you've ever felt awkward at a party excited during a date or incredibly stressed during a business meeting you'll know that social interactions can drastically change the internal state of our bodies science has found that a 5 to 15 minute conversation with an unfamiliar woman can raise a man's testosterone exercise releases feel-good endorphins but exercising in a group releases more of these endorphins sports fans get a testosterone rise just from seeing their team win and men experience a drop or rise in testosterone when they experience some sort of social defeat or social victory what's interesting is how status directly affects testosterone levels studies on rams and primates has found that you can understand quite accurately where each male ram or monkey falls on the social status hierarchy just by comparing their testosterone levels higher status means higher testosterone and yes in humans it's been found that a man's status within an organization correlates with his testosterone for example a ceo would have higher testosterone than a manager while not everyone likes to admit it we all keep stock of who we feel is higher or lower in status compared to ourselves monkeys are so concerned with status that they will in fact pay monkey currency cherry juice to see pictures of higher status male monkeys or attractive female monkeys now if you've found yourself on instagram paying your time and attention to cooler people doing cooler stuff than you maybe you know how these monkeys feel if you think about it it makes sense for monkeys to be preoccupied with what's going on with higher status monkeys if you don't pay attention and overstep your bounds and anger a high-ranked monkey this could provoke an attack so for me while understanding what's going on with dan bilzerian or ryan reynolds will not benefit me in any way some part of my brain still keeps me interested in what these high status people are doing it seems that instagram is scratching an itch that is naturally hardwired into our brains yet a survey of almost 1500 british people aged 14 to 24 suggests that of the different social media platforms instagram has the most negative effect on mental health this got me interested in instagram's potential effect on testosterone lately it seems like men are really interested in optimizing their testosterone with good reason higher testosterone is associated with more muscle less fat stronger bones and increased confidence and better mood there's all kinds of supplements diet plans and workout plans that are supposed to increase testosterone so sure you could eat more cholesterol and healthy fats do sprints and leg workouts but i feel that how social dynamics affect testosterone is not as often talked about testosterone is very responsive to winds testosterone raises after all kinds of wins when you win money win at sports or when at chess your testosterone will raise one study even found hockey players experiencing a 40 rise in testosterone just from watching a video of them winning a past game i don't do it for the fight i freaking hate to fight i like to fight in a cage and one million of people maybe get humiliated knocked out i don't like to fight are you nuts i like to win when you win you're it's the feeling is unbelievable it's so good that it's worth this yeah testosterone has been shown to raise men's interest in women and at the same time testosterone makes people more comfortable with directly greeting and engaging with strangers so testosterone changes your behavior in all kinds of ways it makes you more likely to engage in so-called dominance challenges master of the house ready with the handshake down chorus boy and if you win these dominance challenges then it will raise your testosterone even further a common dominance challenge for primates including humans is maintaining angry eye contact so uh steve would do this as well he'd say so hector um so you're really you're really close with your dad huh gotta hold the gaze don't say anything people get so uncomfortable so is his litmus test to determine if you're a bozo or not unsurprisingly the very highly socially ranked billionaire and face of apple steve jobs exhibited high testosterone-like behaviors like a primal staring contest so what would raise testosterone more supplements and exercise or beating your boss in some sort of sales competition and getting a promotion and a raise or how much would defeating your opponent in a physical dominus challenge and then raising your social rank increase your testosterone there's some interesting research on testosterone and social anxiety social anxiety could be characterized as a very drastic form of subordination that is you perceive your status to be so low that you subordinate yourself to most everyone and new people become scary so primates and humans like steve jobs assert dominance by maintaining angry eye contact until the opponent averts their gaze socially anxious people are especially uncomfortable with eye contact yet researchers found that giving socially anxious people testosterone drastically increases how comfortable they are with staring back at an angry face also women with social anxiety have been found to have lower testosterone and other studies found that giving people testosterone increases these so-called dominance behaviors behaviors that are essentially the opposite of socially anxious subordination behaviors now defeat can be a depressing cycle literally as this paper points out maintaining social hierarchies is generally cyclical where repeated defeat leads to anxious behavior and repeated victory promotes confident behavior which would then lead to more social victories on the other hand it's easier to lose at social challenges if you've already been losing do you have a job no you got money no do you have a woman no you got anything on the horizon uh no kids who are bullied or victimized by their peers that is they are presented with a dominance challenge and then defeated these kids develop symptoms of social anxiety which makes them more likely to be bullied in the future because they act more submissive and submissive kids are more likely to be bullied these kids then experience more defeat perceive themselves as being lower and lower on the social hierarchy and they become less comfortable with new social interactions they are less confident become more anxious and have more depressed mood which are all symptoms of low testosterone so this is also why it's very difficult often when you're trying to treat someone who's depressed because you could say there's not much difference between being depressed and existing in the biochemical state that being at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy would produce well then the question is are you depressed or are you just at the bottom of a dominance hierarchy that like the the symptomatology is very very similar in fact giving depressed men testosterone in the form of a gel has been found to have an antidepressant effect on them unfortunately low testosterone has all kinds of other negative effects including a worsened body composition that is more fat and less muscle so the point here is that experiencing social defeat and being lower on the social hierarchy usually means lower testosterone so here's what i'm wondering does scrolling through a feed of people who are more successful richer more muscular better looking and doing cooler things than you make you perceive yourself as lower in the social hierarchy and then lower your testosterone comparing ourselves to others is a natural tendency for people and it can have an effect on our happiness just like a monkey being pissed when his colleague gets a grape whereas he only gets a stupid cucumber this study titled keeping up with the joneses found that people's satisfaction with their salaries is not totally based on just how much money they're getting but how much more money or how much less money they're getting compared to the people they know so then how many people should we be comparing ourselves to the other interesting thing about robin dunbar's research is that his work calculates that there is a cognitive limit to the amount of friends or acquaintances our brains can keep track of and that limit is 150 people dunbar gives several examples of human groups hitting a limit of between 100 and 200 people for example looking at the census data of around 20 hunter-gatherer tribes the mean tribe size was 153 people the estimated size of english villages in 1086 according to the dome state book was around 150. dunbar and a colleague examined the exchange of christmas cards in the uk and found that the maximum christmas card network was 153 people then a 2008 study gathering data from 18 000 brides found that the average number of wedding guests at a wedding was 148. naturally we probably can't help but compare ourselves to those 150 people we know and then establish mentally where we rank in the different social hierarchies these people belong to sure new people would come and go but how does it affect us to pick up our phones and expose ourselves to the lives of hundreds of people a week and then have to calculate theirs and our positions on the social hierarchy going back to the study that found that monkeys would pay cherry juice to see high-ranked males they found that when it came to lower ranked males those monkeys would not pay at all to see them in fact the researchers had to bribe the monkeys with cherry juice to get them to even look at the lower ranked monkeys now let's be honest do any of you browse instagram for accounts of random non-artistic average looking strangers with average jobs we're mostly going to look at instagram accounts of people who we feel to be higher status in us and maybe meme accounts so is spending your time looking at higher status people going to make you feel like you're higher or lower on the social hierarchy to my knowledge there's no study looking at how instagram directly affects your testosterone but my point is that we should consider testosterone to be a positive feedback loop like spinning a wheel you can do things that add momentum and spin the wheel faster or you can do things that apply the brakes a little bit testosterone is cyclical if your testosterone is higher your mood should be better and you'll have more motivation to go to the gym which helps maintain a healthy body composition and exercise as well as having a healthy body composition are linked to higher testosterone in general men with higher testosterone seem to earn more money and specifically a study on stock brokers found that they were more successful on the days that their testosterone was higher money then gives rise to a perception of success which is a component of prestige and higher prestige is associated with higher testosterone and as mentioned earlier men with higher testosterone are more likely to interact with women they're attracted to and interacting with women raises men's testosterone in short raising testosterone makes it easier to do the things that will further raise testosterone unfortunately having lower testosterone will make it easier to be in the situations that lower your testosterone further so i'd say to just keep an eye on how instagram makes you feel if you feel no difference between using instagram and not using it maybe it doesn't have such a negative effect on your psyche or your physiology but let's say you're feeling good feeling like a winner feeling kind of like someone with high testosterone because of your success at the gym work or in your social life or at chess and then you go on instagram and see someone else who is winning so much harder than you at that thing if that makes you feel less like a winner and worsens your mood maybe you should give instagram a break now i'm not gonna lie i have it on instagram so if you'd like to be jealous of the oysters or goosefish liver i'm eating or the papers or books i'm reading feel free to follow me you can also find me on twitter and if you'd like to keep up with other things i'm reading about be sure to sign up for my newsletter or for my patreon a study is done on 250 people who claim they have psychic abilities a regular deck of cards has an equal number of red and black cards the deck is shuffled and each person predicts the color of the card on top then they take a look and see if they're right this is repeated eight times in a row one participant gets all eight predictions correct the researcher claims that this person has indeed exhibited psychic abilities so based on just the way the experiment is designed is the researcher's claim a viable hypothesis if you'd like to know the answer you'll have to check out brilliant's statistics fundamentals course if you're naturally curious or want to build your problem solving or analytical abilities you'll enjoy brilliant thought-provoking math science and computer science content designed to break complex scientific concepts down into understandable chunks like this lesson on neural networks it takes you from how a computer learns to play tic-tac-toe up to how artificial neurons are trained with over 60 interactive courses in math science and computer science brilliant will grow your understanding of our modern world with a structured and engaging approach check out brilliant.org w-i-l and the first 200 people to follow my link will get 20 off the annual subscription

Channel: What I've Learned

Views: 417,090

Keywords: testosterone, instagram, social media, does instagram lower your testosterone, lower testosterone, boost testosterone, raise testosterone, social hierarachy, hierarchy, rank, jordan peterson

Id: xpVnXJl3GK8

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/guacamoll_1]

Thanks for sharing this unspoken phenomenon