Adrenal mediation of intermale aggression maintained by aromatized and reduced metabolites of testosterone

Individually housed CD-1 mice were either sham castrated or castrated and treated with testosterone (T), estradiol benzoate (EB), dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a combination of EB and DHT (EB+DHT), or the injection vehicle. Following 16 days of isolation and subcutaneous injections, animals were tested repeatedly for fighting behavior in paired encounters with nonaggressive stimulus males. Results indicated that the T and EB+DHT groups fought to the same extent as the gonadally intact group. Both the EB and DHT groups fought more than the vehicle-treated group but less than the T, EB+DHT and sham castrated groups. A similar study was subsequently performed with adrenalectomized animsls. Adrenalectomy eliminated agonistic responses in animals receiving metabolites of testosterone (EB, DHT, EB+DHT) but had only slight effects in gonadally intact and T-treated, castrated mice. The results suggested that a) EB and DHT, either singly or in combination, maintain aggression through a synergism with adrenal steroids; b) the combined effects of EB and DHT reflect an additive action rather than synergistic interaction, notwithstanding the synergism with adrenal steroids; c) metabolism of testosterone to estrogen and dihydrotestosterone does not sufficiently account for the action of testosterone.     

“No,You're Playing the Race Card”: Testing the Effects of Anti-Black,Anti-Latino,and Anti-Immigrant Appeals in the Post-Obama Era

Despite a sizable literature on racial priming, scholars have failed to account for the shifting nature of racial appeals. First, theories of racial priming have not yet been widely applied to increasingly common anti-immigrant and anti-Latino political appeals. Second, theories of racial priming have not adequately accounted for both an increasingly racialized political climate and increased tolerance for explicit anti-minority appeals. In two survey experiments fielded both before Trump's rise and after his presidential victory, we find the Implicit-Explicit (IE) model always fails for anti-black appeals, sometimes fails for anti-immigrant appeals, but consistently holds for anti-Latino appeals. While we find the null effects of implicit versus explicit anti-black and anti-immigrant appeals are partly driven by tolerance for the explicit appeals, we also find evidence that white Americans are adept at recognizing the racial content of appeals featuring widely used, congruent issue-group pairs. Our findings shed light on conditions under which the IE model does and does not hold in the current political era.