Hormone AO 3

• A strength is that research has shown lowering testosterone levels reduces aggressiveness, while raising it, increases aggression. Prisoners who had committed unprovoked violent crimes had higher levels of testosterone than those who had committed nonviolent crimes. Teens with higher levels of testosterone were more prone to delinquency, hard drug use and provocations.
• A strength is that there is supporting evidence. Albert et al found that injecting female rats with testosterone made them behave more aggressively. Showing a positive correlation between testosterone and aggression. However, Albert et al.'s study was done on rats, which are very different to humans and have very different horns. Humans have more hormones than rats do, suggesting that it could be a different hormone that causes aggression in humans rather than testosterone.
• A limitation is that there is conflicting evidence. Tricker et al. randomly assigned 43 men to receive either 600 mg of testosterone per week or placebo, but observed no differences in aggression between the two groups. Which suggests that there are no links between testosterone and aggression since there were no differences in aggression levels when given testosterone compared to those who were given a placebo.