title: Testosterone levels and their associations with lifetime number of opposite sex partners and remarriage in a large sample of American elderly men and women.
abstract: Testosterone (T) has been argued to modulate mating and parenting behavior in many species, including humans. The role of T for these behaviors has been framed as the challenge hypothesis. Following this hypothesis, T should be positively associated with the number of opposite sex partners a male has. Indeed research in humans has shown that T is positively related to the number of opposite sex partners a young man has had. Here we test, in both men and women, whether this relationship extends to the lifetime number of sex partners. We also explored whether or not T was associated with current marital status, partnership status and whether or not the participant remarried. Using a large sample of elderly men and women (each sample n>700), we show that T is positively and sizably associated with the number of opposite sex partners in men. When controlling for potential confounding variables such as educational attainment, age, BMI, ethnicity, specific use of a medication and time of sampling this effect remained. For women, the relationship between T and number of opposite sex partners was positive but did not prove to be robust. In both men and women there was no evidence for an association between T and current marital status and partnership status (being in a relationship or not). However, remarriage was positively associated with T, but only in males. Results are discussed with reference to the literature on T and sex partners, remarriage and more broadly the challenge hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. T.V.Pollet@rug.nl
authors.forename: Thomas V
authors.initials: TV
authors.lastname: Pollet
authors.forename: Leander
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: van der Meij
authors.forename: Kelly D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Cobey
authors.forename: Abraham P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Buunk
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020010:Heterosexuality / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008393:Marriage; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D012747:Sexual Partners; D013739:Testosterone / Q000097:blood*
chemical_list: D013739:Testosterone