Study claims guns boost testosterone

[Katya Mullethov]

And nobody got shot !



From WebMd
Guns Up Testosterone, Male Aggression

July 28, 2006 -- Handling a gun makes men's testosterone levels rise -- and makes them more aggressive.

The finding comes from a study by psychology student Jennifer Klinesmith and her professors at Knox College, Galesburg, Ill. Klinesmith designed the study, in which 18- to 22-year-old college men participated.

Klinesmith told the men they'd be taking part in a study of the effect of attention to detail on taste sensitivity. She collected a saliva sample for testosterone testing. Then she led each man into a room where he sat at a table with an object on it. The man had to take apart the object and put it back together according to instructions.

For half the men, the object was a pellet gun that mimicked a Desert Eagle automatic handgun. The other half of the men worked with a child's game called Mouse Trap.
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[MichiganVote]

1. Sure they do....what a faulty study. Gun vs. Mousetrap

[elocs]

2. This is surprising? A gun is a phallic symbol after all. n/t

[valerief]

3. That's what I was thinking, too. I'll bet holding a guitar boosts testosterone, too. nt

[SteveM]

35. You shoulda caught a whiff from the woman next to me on the range -- HooWEE (nt)

[E-Mag]

20. I have not been here long

but this is a record it usually takes at least 8 posts to bring up the phallic or some sort of penis reference. I think this record will stand for a while! Congratulations you win one Internets

[SteveM]

34. Really? I thought it was a cigar (nt)

[safeinOhio]

4. Testosterone does many things

not all of it is negative. Try inserting "assertiveness" for aggressive. It sounds funny to me because I'm being treated for low T with weekly injections of testosterone. This therapy has improved my life immeasurably. I once again have a libido, feel less depressed and have more energy. Testosterone plays an important role in both males and females. So, if I'm reading this study correctly, I should buy, shoot, handle as many guns as I can and not have to face those painful shots every week.

[gorfle]

7. Trade one shot for another! :) n/t.

.

[baldguy]

5. Nobody is surprised at this.

Put a gun in some peoples hands they think they're Rambo.

[eqfan592]

6. Yes, of course...

...because an increase of testosterone automatically equates to making a person think they are "Rambo." Shockingly enough, I've never had that feeling while cleaning or shooting any of my firearms. Yet I have experienced some of the positive effects stated by the previous poster.

[baldguy]

8. Increased testosterone also tends to decrease intelligence.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

11. It is also higher in bald men. So does that makes you an aggressive idiot?

[pipoman]

13. Great minds...

:rofl: VVVVV you beat me to it..

[pipoman]

12. You do know the underlying cause of male pattern baldness, no?

http://menshealth.about.com/cs/hairhairloss/a/baldness.htm

:rofl: :spray:

[baldguy]

14. I've lost my hair, but my brain hasn't atrophied as a result.

And neither have other appendages.

;)

[pipoman]

16. I attribute mine to

U-Turns under the sheets...

[eqfan592]

27. Last I checked....

...my brain hasn't atrophied either. But I did learn something today about why I'm going bald. ;)

[The River]

9. How Can Something That Can "Shoot"

over and over and over again without the barrel melting,
something that can literally "blow your socks off",
and something that can penetrate almost anything
possibly have any testosterone boosting capabilities
or sexual overtones?

[baldguy]

10. .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xj4W2TGQPI

Kubrick understood.

[Tim01]

15. The test only works for guys who have balls in the first place. nt

[rrneck]

17. How 'bout a link? nt

[Katya Mullethov]

18. try this one

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Guns+Up+Testosterone%2C+Male+Aggression&btnG=Google+Search&rlz=1R2GGLL_en&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

[rrneck]

26. Aren't you clever.

Unfortunately lacking in common courtesy. Here is the link that should have appeared.

http://www.webmd.com/news/20060728/guns-up-testosterone-male-aggression

[proteus_lives]

19. Like it's hard raising the testosterone levels of 18- to 22-years olds.

:eyes:

[benEzra]

21. Hmmm, a 3-year-old story on a student project by a psych student, with no controls for cofounding.

The headline "Childrens' Games Reduce Testosterone" would have been equally valid, and equally specious.

Seriously, this was crossposted here 3 years ago, when the MSM first ran it. It's no more relevant now than it was then...

[aikoaiko]

22. Its really stunning that a top tier journal like Psyc Science published this study

Yes, it is interesting, but it needed to be followed up by more stimuli to parse out the qualities that made led to the pellet gun eliciting testosterone and "aggression" compared to the game Mousetrap. The pellet gun and game varied along many variables, including possibly something interesting to an 18-22 year old versus uninteresting.

[benEzra]

23. My money would be on interesting vs. uninteresting.

But certainly the methodology (the exclusion of females, and the use of a nursery-school game as a "control") suggest that the study was constructed, consciously or unconsciously, to reinforce the testers' own personal biases.

[eqfan592]

28. You both make some really valid points. Thanks :) (nt)

[JonQ]

31. Also would have been nice to give the sample size

I couldn't find that in the original article. A "trend" in a population of 6 is not really significant when attempting to draw conclusions about 6 billion.

[Euromutt]

30. Three years is plenty of time for someone to have replicated the results

One study proves exactly nothing; if you get several studies, by different researchers, which yield consistent results, then you're onto something. Something tells me these findings have not been replicated in the interim, though...

There was some study done in the late 1960s, IIRC, in which test subjects were shown another "test subject" (actually a cohort) and told to give him an "electric shock" if he did a particular thing wrong. The study found that if the test subject and the cohort were in the presence of a firearm (which just "happened" to be there), the test subjects applied higher levels of electric shock. So not dissimilar to the one in question. It was a bit more complex than that, because there were various, rather contrived, controls, but the main thing I remember is running across a study done a few years later that attempted to replicate the previous study's results, and utterly failed to do so. The researchers on the second study in fact expressed extreme skepticism about the earlier study's findings. The main problem they encountered was that a large segment (maybe a majority; I don't recall) of their prospective test subjects refused to believe (to the point of derision) the explanation for the presence of the firearm. And since the validity of the study's findings relied on the subjects not suspecting that the experiment was actually about the firearm, those subjects had to be discarded. The second group of researchers expressed surprise that the first study had not needed to do this, and suspected that some (possibly many) test subjects in the first study had not been discarded when they should have been, thus introducing bias into the results.

One point that has been made of studies purportedly showing an increased level of aggression when the test subjects are exposed to firearms is that they are usually carried out using college students. Particularly after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which made it illegal for anyone under 18 to purchase any firearm, and under 21 to purchase a handgun, most college students may never have been previously handled a firearm, so there is a factor of novelty value that needs to be controlled for, but rarely is. So it's very open to question whether you'd get similar results of elevated testosterone and aggression if you used as your test subjects people who have routinely handle firearms.

[slackmaster]

24. That's one reason I keep them locked up in the safe

Not to mention that fingerprints cause rust.

[paulsby]

25. not surprising at all. read the science

all sorts of things cause transient spikes in T levels. they have found that when men watch their sports team win, they get a similar spike, and a drop at a loss.

it doesn't take much for the HPTA axis to give transient spikes.

for what it's worth,a blow to the head will cause a hgh spike. i wouldn't recommend this, though

[eqfan592]

29. Hmm, a blow to the head?

I wonder if this effect occurs when football players bang helmets together. Interesting! :)

[JonQ]

32. Maybe they should have given one group a realistic toy gun

and the other a real gun to account for interest. I'm guessing most guys are more interested in a toy gun than in a childs game.

Sounds like they had a conclusion first, then set out to prove it.

Next study: when given the choice between playing with a toy gun, or helping their parents fill out their tax returns, most 6-8 year old boys chose the toy gun. Proof that boys are violent by nature and irresponsible? More on this as it develops.

[pipoman]

33. It is an idiotic study with an idiotic, meaningless conclusion

which is surprising, because when I think of highly scientific reliable studies I first think of Knox College. It sure is surprising that this is from an Ill (sic, does anyone still use 3 letter abbreviations for US states?) school study.

Lets see, wouldn't it be prudent, if we were actually trying to come to an honest, conclusive finding, to use say a gun with one group, the mouse trap game, a football, a barbie doll, a race car, a doughnut, a sword, a Rubik's cube, a porno movie and a punching bag? It is a study which set out to make a statement to a public which will slurp up anything fed them from an institution of higher learning as if it were grandmas chicken soup....mission accomplished. People are still talking about it 3 years after the publication of the study and acting as though it has even a scintilla of meaning.

[Xenotime]

36. How is it they were able to mimic an automatic weapon?

What the hell does it shoot and how fast?

[X_Digger]

37. The 'Desert Eagle Automatic' is a handgun

Semi-automatic in action- but pistols used to be called 'automatics' because they automatically expend spent casings and load a fresh cartridge. A more technically precise term would be 'self-loading', but there are terms in literature and the media that confuse those who don't know how common firearms work.

[iverglas]

38. I love it when they fight among themselves

You people here in this thread can't even remember who your good buddies are, can you?

:rofl:

[NewMoonTherian]

39. I never took it into consideration.

But it does make sense. I imagine you'd get similar results with subjects participating in a Tae Kwon Do class versus a dance class.

That said, Desert Eagle is a hell of a gun. I wonder if the fake mimicked the weight and the feel of racking the slide. If the test were repeated firing actual guns though, I think you'd get a bigger spike out of a .38 revolver. I fired a Desert Eagle .50 for the first time this weekend, and the recoil was almost disappointing.

[vagabond2009]

40. LOL

Huh, well handling women causes men's testosterone to rise as well! I guess we ought to ban male/female contact? Oh wait, I shouldn't suggest that here, someone will probably pick it up and run with it.