Violent Athletes
 

I know the Chris Benoit thread is very old, though I didn't comment on the thread, I did read some of the comments. I often wondered what caused him to go nuts. I wonder what makes a lot of the athletes violent. I'm not saying all of them, but they come off that way to me. I heard jokes about teams that lost the super bowl a couple of weeks ago. I would hear jokes like "I feel sorry for their wives tonight".

I think it's the testosterone. Doctors found that Chris Benoit's body showed injections of testosterone. I don't think hormones necessarily make athletes violent, but I do believe they cause them to seek social dominance. When I was in undergrad, I thought the football players were total assholes, and at the time I thought it was just the way they were. Now, I know what it was. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes, but I think athletes, mainly football players and wrestlers are extremely violent. I know not all of them are that way, but I think most of them are.

my guess would be steroids

Cheerful...I really couldn't tell you but there are a lot of studies out there now trying to correlate HGH in humans with the activities that they partake in and how it affects their social behavior.

You can start with this link and see what you think afterwards.

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/f...rss_psychtoday

Thanks for the link Daemon. It's commonly assumed that testosterone (the sterotype of the male hormone:rolleyes:) is intimately tied to violence. I personally believe the evidence is all around us. Weight lifters who overdose on anabolic steroids experience roid rage,(I'm gonna get a little graphic here) but castration, the removal of the main source of testosterone has been a sample of animal husbandry for centuries.

My question is about the nature of the relationship. If a normal guy is given a shot of testosterone, will he turn into the Hulk?:rolleyes: And do violent guys have higher levels of testosterone than their more docile peers?

In my own opinion, I would say yes, and historically scientist would have agreed with me, but now the truth behind this has gotten a lot more complex.

cheerfulgreek, I live in a house of male athletes, all football and/or other "helmet sports" players; not one of them is violent or an a**hole.

I only responded to the post because, honestly, I get tired of hearing about a**hole football players or athletes. It is a pretty common theme on message boards. So, I guess my toes did get stepped on.:)

Well..interesting tidbit about the testosterone thing. Jacob's Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality that ends up with males having an XYY genotype, have been suggested [not proved] to be more violent than others. They do have higher testosterone levels. The reason for believing they are more aggressive is due to prisons having a slightly higher population level of Jacob's Syndrome men than what we expect the general population to have. Like I said, though, it hasn't been proven - just an interesting little side note.

I didn't say all, and I've already apologized ahead of time if I was stepping on anyones toes. In other words, if my comments and opinions are going to bother you, then don't read them.

Also, I think it's great that the male athletes you know aren't violent, but MY own experiences with them have all been bad ones.

And I didn't say all, because scientifically research about testosterone and aggression finds only a weak connection between the two, and when aggression is more narrowly defined as simple physical violence, the connection all but disappears. I do think that testosterone has a facilitative effect on aggression in some cases. Also, in some cases, testosterone may be necessary for enabling violent behavior, but even that, is not on it's own sufficient.

Look at the men and womens prisons. It's been proven through research, that the most violent inmates have higher levels of testosterone than their less violent peers. Scientist hypothesize that this violence is just one manifestation of the more biologically and reproductively goal of dominance. I think testosterone is generated to prepare the body to respond to competition and challenges to a man/woman's status, and any stimulus or event that signals either of these things can trigger an increase in testosterone levels, which can turn into violence and certainly dominance.

I'm sure all the scientific stuff y'all are talking about is true. I sure couldn't dispute it;)

I only posted because I was responding to your opinion that most athletes, especially football players are violent. You did say that you hoped you didn't step on anyone's toes, BUT... I was responding to that :) I'm not mad though, just responding.

Off topic: I think it is funny that people will say things like, "don't get mad when I say this, BUT...." or "don't take this in the wrong way, BUT....", or "I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, BUT..." and then expect that the people they are addressing will not have a negative reaction and respond. My sister would do that to me all the time and it drove me nuts. She would never understand why I got mad when she told me something mean. She'd come back with, "But, I told you not to get mad!" Oh, well then that makes it ok. ;)

Now back to testosterone.

Sorry about all the smile things, I think they are dumb too, but I'm trying to convey humor, not anger...

While this is a common train of thought, you have to remember that we can't test the entire population. It's entirely possible that the prisons have a completely average level of testosterone. We haven't really done the research to prove it.

srmom: I agree that athletes are certainly not more violent than non-athletes, in my experience.

I hate disclaimers just like I hate sayings like "let's agree to disagree." DUH? :)

Cosign on the sports-violence research that has been discussed, too. There is a relationship between testosterone levels and violence and athletes are documented to either have higher levels of testosterone and/or sports provide a context where violence is appropriate for both players and fans. This manifests itself on the fields/during sports evens and often off the fields/away from the sports events. None of this stuff is 100% but it's about a correlation, not causation.

Tell your significant other that K-Mart has a Valentines special on $3.00 sweaters.

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/...ticons7/24.gif

No one said the the research that was done is accurate. Most of what I posted is based on my opinion. I was just backing it up with scientific information.

No one really knows the answer, but a growing body of evidence suggest that testosterone is as much the result of violence as its cause. I mean, both winning a sporting match and beating an opponent at chess can boost testoterone levels. Just like losing a sporting match, growing old and becoming obese, all reduce levels of testosterone.

Also changes in testosterone levels in response to challenges can be further shaped by our own expectations. There has also been a study that was done, that said actors, blue collar workers and con artist tend to have higher levels of testoterone than clerks, intellectuals and administrators. So it's not just athletes. I just mentioned football players because of my own experiences with them. It's even been suggested that the antisocial behaviors related to high testosterone are a function of the manner by which dominance is maintained in these groups.

I dunno, lets say if researchers were to study other groups of people, like the rich and famous, they might discover that testosterone is connected not to violence, but to the person who drives the biggest SUV, or has the nicest house. Who knows?

There's also evidence in humans that, just as in animals, testosterone is responsive to male-male competition. Back to when I was comparing actors and blue collar workers, to clerks and administrators, I'm not sure whether this correlation was the cause or an effect of the environment in which these individuals found themselves. Back to what I stated about prisons, are high testosterone males more likely to become violent criminals, or does being a violent criminal raise a guy's level of testosterone?

I think in this case, both do. srmom, my opinion differs from yours because based on your posts you live with athletes and haven't had a problem with them. I haven't had any problems from all athletes, just football players, and this goes back to what I said about the different changes in testoterone levels. I believe it's higher in more aggressive sports, or more aggressive activity which may be why a lot of football players are violent, and why Chris Benoit killed his family. None if this is 100% true, that's why we have opinions.

If you're mad at me for whatever reason, I apologize if I offended you, but I still think high testosterone males are more likely to practice dominance, which can turn into violence.

I'm not mad at all - no worries :)

Oh Gosh. It is so annoying when people walk on egg shells like this. :) Personal opinions that are not based on more than a loosely qualitative observation of a limited sample size don't truly challenge these findings. That's why it suffices to just say "correlation is not causation," as I said in my previous post.

Opinions aside, research has found a relationship between aggression, violence, competitiveness, and testosterone, in general, and athletics more specifically (and not just male dominated athletics). This research has been conducted on animals just as some has been conducted on humans, as you said.

Such findings have also been found to loosely apply to nonsports but all of this is a "nature vs. nurture" kind of thing. This society has certain gender expectations that allow males certain freedoms and behaviors that people assume are "natural," so testesterone level may have a weaker effect than gendered socialization does. The research that tends to disagree with the impact of testosterone is based on a "nature vs. nature" distinction and which has a greater impact. But the most credible research will control for both gendered socialization and hormone level.

When we talk about a relationship between gender, testosterone, and aggression, it doesn't have to manifest itself in obvious and everday interactions. It can be limited to athletic competitveness or manifest itself somewhere else that isn't so obvious. It's easy to overlook this stuff if you aren't consciously observing it or (trained to even) reflect on what you have unconsciously observed.