Testosterone Level Changes During Video Game Playing

Testosterone is said to play a very important role in both male and female competiveness; however we understand less about testosterone in females than we do males. In males the relationship between overall dominance and testosterone are one in the same. Testosterone, (which was also represented as “T” in the study) levels for male athletes show variances in ways we assume both during and after a competitive match. The male athletes T levels rise shortly before their match in anticipation. However after the match their T levels will depend on whether that person has won or lost at their competition. Competitiveness and testosterone use in females is said to be very useful too. It affects females when they are vying support of their mate and providing for their children.
For this study there was twenty-eight males and thirty-two females, ages 17 to 35. These subjects were placed directly across from each other in front of a video game screen. The experimenter stressed heavily to the subjects that winning was very important. Each subject gave 5 saliva samples during different time periods of playing the video game, as well as after and before play. These samples tested testosterone levels, cortisol, hormone and hemastix levels. The subjects were also asked to write sentences explaining their feelings, overall performance during the game and how they felt at that moment in time.
The results for this study concluded that there are significantly higher testosterone levels in males than females. The T levels in male pretest to mid test showed a significant rise in testosterone. However, respectfully for females there was no apparent pre match rise in T levels. In fact the comparison t-test showed results of a significant reduction in T levels from pretest to during playing the video game. Contrary to the pre test hypothesis there was no tendency for winners to have higher T levels than the losers, in either sex. When testing their cortisol levels it showed that