Yes, well, that subject line is a little much but just when you thought you knew everything about the big T here comes something new:
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/07/30/stirevnws02006.html
That article was obviously written by someone with a bone to pick. It is full of hand-wavy “it could really be this” statements, designed to cast doubt on the general conclusions of the people who study the subject professionally. Everything asserted is formally true, but when you have to invoke several different rationalizations to explain a variety of phenomena that can be answered with one explanation, you should probably go with the one explanation: testosterone makes you aggressive.
A completely unscientific side note: I have been lifting weights in commercial gyms since the late seventies. I have seen a lot of guys before and after they started taking steroids (synthetic testosterone-like compounds). These things have very idiosyncratic effects in different people, as you might expect, but it is easy to spot the general trend: they make you much more aggressive, often to the point of complete personality overhauls (rarely for the better). This was noticed before there was a widespread societal expectation for it, although “Roid rage” did become a commonplace saying eventually. (And has now been eclipsed by the elision to “road rage”.)
My WAG is that moderate levels of testosterone are conducive to intelligence, but that very low or very high levels are not. Therefore (by my hypothesis) low-testosterone men and high-testosterone women should be most intelligent. [ul][li]Male college athletes get lower grades than non-athletes. Female college athletes, however, get higher grades than non-athletes. (I am presuming that athletes, male and female alike, tend to have higher testosterone levels than non-athletes of the same sex.) I admit my reasoning is colored by the fact that I hate male athletes and love female athletes.[/li]Prisoners have high levels of testosterone. Prisoners have below-average IQ. I know correlation is not causation, but it’s interesting to speculate.[/ul]I have more evidence that is suggestive, but I don’t want to start getting hate mail, so I’ll keep it to myself.