성 차이와 행동에서 테스토스테론의 역할

### 테스토스테론에 대한 이해: 행동 및 놀이 차이에서 테스토스테론의 역할
* 테스토스테론은 혈액을 순환하는 강력한 화학물질로 신체적 특성과 행동적 특성에 큰 영향을 미치며, **남성은 여성보다 15~20배 더 많이 분비**되어 성별 차이를 관찰할 수 있습니다.
* 🧠 행동 내분비학 분야에서는 **테스토스테론과 같은 호르몬이 행동에 미치는 영향**과 그 반대의 경우를 탐구하여 성별 차이의 생물학적 토대에 대한 통찰력을 밝혀냅니다.
* 🌍 성 및 호르몬에 대한 문화적 논의는 논쟁의 여지가 있으며, 일부 사람들은 남성과 여성의 구별에 대한 생물학적 표현을 고통스럽게 여기지만 **이러한 지식은 연민과 이해를 증진**할 수 있습니다.
* 👶 발표자의 아들에 대한 개인적인 일화는 **테스토스테론이 놀이 행동에 어떤 영향을 미치는지** 보여줍니다. 남자아이는 여자아이에 비해 **더 거칠고 넘어지는 놀이**를 하는 경향이 있으며, 침팬지 관찰 결과도 이를 뒷받침합니다.
* 🐒 야생 침팬지에 대한 연구에 따르면 **수컷 침팬지가 더 경쟁적인 행동**을 하는 것으로 나타났는데, 이는 놀이 싸움이 생존과 번식 기술을 개발하는 수단으로 사용되는 **인간 남자아이들의 유사한 패턴**을 반영하는 것입니다.
* 📊 연구에 따르면 발달 과정에서 **테스토스테론 수치가 높아지면 여자아이의 거친 놀이가 증가**하는 반면, 남아의 **테스토스테론을 차단하면 그러한 놀이가 감소**하여 생물학적 요인이 행동 경향을 형성한다는 생각이 강화됩니다.
* 🌱 일부에서는 유해한 남성성에 대항하기 위한 수단으로 남자아이의 거친 놀이를 반대하지만, 그러한 놀이를 거부하면 **성인이 되어 공격성이 증가**하고 **사회적 어려움을 겪을 수 있다는 증거**가 있습니다.
* 🌈 궁극적으로 성 차이에 대한 과학적 이해는 건강한 행동을 기르는 데 매우 중요하며, **아이들이 활동적인 놀이에 참여하도록 장려하는 것**은 아이들의 발달에 도움이 됩니다.

테스토스테론은 남녀 간의 행동과 놀이의 차이를 형성하며, 이러한 생물학적 영향을 이해하는 것이 중요함을 강조합니다.

As I look around the room, I can see, I think it's about half of you have been exposed to high levels of a powerful chemical, and it is circulating in your blood as we speak. It's flowing freely through almost all of your cells, including neurons, where it affects whether they live or die and how they grow and function. So, this one chemical has profound and lasting effects -- not just on your body, but also on your brain and behavior. This is testosterone. Both sexes have it, but men have much more than women, about 15 to 20 times more. And that is what explains why half of you are bigger and hairier than the other half, on average, like all sex differences. For the last 20 years, I've been teaching about behavioral endocrinology, and this is a field that focuses on how hormones affect behavior and vice versa. And I'm particularly drawn to testosterone because it explains so much about why the sexes are different.

But this area of science has become deeply entangled in the culture wars. And now, simply saying things that are obvious to most biologists, like that there are two reproductive classes, male and female, can land you in a heap of trouble. And I know because I've had some personal experience with this. And I also know that for some trans people, their allies, and others, that this language about the biology of sex can feel painful and that others are trying to weaponize the science. And here I do not have the answers, but I can tell you that my students have really enjoyed learning about this science, partly because it helps them understand more about their own bodies and feelings. And they come away with a sense of more compassion for other people who are different from themselves. So I'm going to be talking about sex differences in play to try to convince you that this science is fascinating, and it can help us all be better off.

So first, I want to share the results from a joint project I started 15 years ago, in which I grew two small organs that secreted testosterone in my uterus. (Laughter) Those organs were attached to the new human I was growing in there. And now ... (Laughter) (Applause) And now you can observe the behavior of that human in this video of two boys wrestling each other. It's from a few years ago, and my son is the one with the short hair. This kind of rough-and-tumble play is more common in boys than girls everywhere in the world. And when my son was growing inside of me, his tiny little testes were cranking out the testosterone. And at that early stage, it has some very big and important jobs to do. It has to masculinize the genitalia, and it has to ensure that everything is set up for sperm to be produced.

and delivered later on. And it is also acting in the brain to motivate later behaviors, like play fighting, that are particularly beneficial to many male mammals. I never gave much thought to testosterone until I spent the better part of a year in western Uganda studying wild chimpanzees. And as I watched them living their lives -- eating, playing, sleeping, fighting, having sex -- I was really struck by our shared patterns of behavior. And particularly relevant to this talk was the fact that the little males did much more play fighting than the little females. And these connections to us are so striking because we don't share any culture with chimpanzees. But we do share almost all of our genes and our hormones, including higher levels of testosterone in the males. And another pattern of behavior we share is that relative to females, male chimps spend much more time and energy competing for social dominance. And in chimps, this involves lots of fighting.

and also lots of threats and having a sense about when to challenge other males, but also when to submit and when to flee. And these males aren't fighting each other because they know that this is a great way to get more sex with fertile females. But males who behave this way do tend to pass on more of their genes into future generations, and then their sons inherit similar propensities. So simply surviving without passing on one's genes is an evolutionary dead end. So in addition to survival skills, young animals like chimps also need to learn reproductive skills, and they do that through play. And our ancestors also practiced these skills through play. And that legacy is reflected in our own kids. Now not all boys have any desire to tackle their friends, and they would rather play house or dress up, and they should go for it. There are no hard rules in nature about how the sexes should play. When I was little, I used to wrestle with my three older brothers,

and I played Little League baseball. But when I played with my girlfriends, like my best friend Annie, she's the dominant one there in the stripes, and she's sitting right here. (Laughter) Our play just didn't involve that kind of roughhousing that my son and his friends were into. Annie and I would do stuff like have tea and run class for our stuffed animals -- sorry, I'm just getting a little emotional because she's here -- the smallest of whom lived in a doll house. And for some reason, we loved playing office. And -- I know, crazy. And we developed a filing system and -- (Laughter) And we spent a lot of time filling out forms. OK, I'm not kidding. Filling out forms, and I'm saying something publicly I've never said before, and I'm sorry, Annie. You know what I'm going to say. Filling out forms from junk mail,

which we might have stolen from neighborhood mailboxes. (Laughter) OK, so wait, wait, am I really trying to tell you that knowing how to set up tea for five or subscribe to National Geographic was supposed to make us better moms or whatever? OK, not exactly. The specifics of play are always influenced by culture, but social play in general helps to develop skills that both sexes need, like how to resolve conflict, how to take turns, and even to figure out just what you can get away with. So ... But the sex-specialization part, with more nurturing play in girls and more fighting play in boys, did likely evolve because these are skills that each sex needs to learn how to reproduce. OK, that's a little evolutionary background. And now we can ask why scientists think that testosterone drives any of this. So our strongest evidence comes from experiments in other animals. And here's a couple of headlines.

So, in females, in rats and monkeys anyway, jacking up testosterone during that early developmental period causes rough play to increase dramatically. And in males, the reverse is true. Blocking testosterone during that same early period causes rough play to plummet. And in humans, of course, we can't go messing around with the kind of hormones that fetuses are exposed to, so we have to rely on less direct evidence. And we do have a wealth of studies on the play styles of girls who were exposed to unusually high testosterone levels in the womb. And there, study after study shows that these girls do have an increased preference for rough play. So, we still have so much to learn about how genes, hormones, and culture all interact to produce sex differences in behavior. But all of the evidence we do have points in the same direction. And that is that differences in testosterone and evolutionary pressures explain why boys more than girls,

think it's a great idea to tackle their friends. OK, so let's just assume that there is something natural about all this. It's also natural to hook up with your ex. (Laughter) OK? But that does not mean it's a good thing to do. (Laughter) And according to one mom, rough play in boys is also something we should probably reconsider. And she expressed this view in a parenting magazine, quote, Letting my boys wrestle with each other only reinforces toxic masculinity, and I want no part of it. OK, so perhaps we could create more peaceful men by nipping it in the bud and just preventing them from practicing aggression when they were little. OK, that's one idea. Except the available evidence just doesn’t support it. So, for instance, depriving male rats of the kind of rough play they want leads to adult male rats who never learned how to manage their aggressive impulses.

They actually end up more rather than less aggressive. They fail to cooperate, they fail to respond appropriately to social cues, and ultimately they fail to find mates. And having males like these around doesn't help anybody. (Laughter) So we are not rats, and we are not chimpanzees. For one thing, if you men were chimpanzees, you would be ripping each other to shreds. If you were meeting for the first time, that is. It would be mayhem. And we humans have something no other animal has. And that is the ability to reflect on, talk about and, together, to determine how we can control some of our more harmful impulses. And culture here makes all the difference. For example, men here in Canada are much less violent than our male neighbors over the southern border. Apart from hockey, apparently. (Laughter) And that is not because Canadian men have lost their testicles or ...

(Laughter) Or because Canadian boys don't wrestle each other. Instead, it's because of differences in the Canadian culture, perhaps in the gun laws or in the health care system or in levels of socioeconomic inequality. So as a society, we lose a lot if we leave the science of sex out of the conversation or distort the facts. And that science strongly suggests that male typical play is not budding toxic masculinity. Instead, it is a healthy behavior that we should not discourage. (Applause) So exaggerating only slightly, testosterone from those tiny -- Sorry, tiny testes I grew 15 years ago, made my son who he is today. And he is still a great kid, even with his testosterone reaching record levels. (Laughter) And I want him and all of you to be captivated by the science of sex and to feel comfortable talking about it. And last, I hope that all our kids can just play more in real rather than virtual life.

and preferably outside. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

How Testosterone and Culture Shape Behavior | Carole K. Hooven | TED

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테스토스테론이 행동과 성별 차이에 미치는 영향

남녀 모두에게 존재하는 강력한 화학물질인 테스토스테론은 신체, 뇌, 행동에 지대한 영향을 미치며, 남성은 여성보다 15~20배 더 많이 분비합니다.

20년간 행동 내분비학을 가르친 연사는 성별 차이를 설명하는 과학의 역할을 강조하고 이 주제를 둘러싼 문화적 논쟁을 강조합니다.

연사는 테스토스테론 분비 기관을 가진 인간을 키우는 개인 프로젝트를 통해 남성 호르몬이 생식기를 남성화하고 남아에게 더 흔한 거칠고 거친 놀이에 영향을 미치는 초기 영향력을 보여줍니다.

남성 행동에서 테스토스테론과 놀이의 역할

테스토스테론은 인간과 침팬지 모두의 수컷 행동에 영향을 미쳐 놀이 싸움과 사회적 우위를 차지하기 위한 경쟁을 증가시킵니다.

인간과 유사한 유전자와 호르몬을 공유하는 수컷 침팬지는 자신의 유전자를 전달하기 위해 싸움과 위협적인 행동을 합니다.

인간을 포함한 어린 동물에게 놀이는 생존과 번식 기술을 배우는 데 필수적이며, 남녀가 어떻게 놀아야 하는지에 대한 엄격한 규칙은 없습니다.

테스토스테론이 놀이 행동에 미치는 영향

사회적 놀이는 갈등 해결과 차례 지키기 같은 기술을 개발하는 데 필수적이며, 특정 놀이 스타일에 문화적 영향을 미칩니다.

여아는 양육 활동에 참여하고 남아는 거친 놀이를 하는 등 성별에 따른 놀이의 전문화는 생식 기술을 가르치기 위해 진화했을 가능성이 높습니다.

동물 연구와 자궁에서 높은 테스토스테론 수치에 노출된 여아를 대상으로 한 연구에서 나온 증거는 테스토스테론이 성별 간 놀이 행동의 차이를 유발한다는 생각을 뒷받침합니다.

남자아이의 거친 놀이에 대해 다시 생각하기

남자아이들의 거친 놀이는 종종 자연스러운 것으로 여겨지지만, 한 엄마는 그것이 독성이 있는 남성성을 강화한다고 주장합니다.

동물 연구에 따르면 남성의 거친 놀이를 박탈하면 공격성과 사회적 어려움이 증가할 수 있다고 합니다.

그러나 인간은 해로운 충동을 통제하는 방법을 성찰하고 토론할 수 있는 독특한 능력을 가지고 있으며, 문화적 차이가 남성 폭력에 중요한 역할을 합니다.

성에 대한 과학적 논의의 중요성

총기법이나 건강 관리와 같은 캐나다 문화의 차이가 남성 놀이가 유해한 남성성의 원인이라기보다는 사회적 행동에 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

남성의 전형적인 놀이는 건강한 행동이며, 낙담해서는 안 됩니다.

연사는 성에 대한 과학적 논의의 중요성을 강조하고 아이들이 실생활에서, 가급적 야외에서 더 많은 놀이를 하도록 권장합니다.