Hormones

A case that comes to mind when I think hormones affected someone’s behavior was a time during my freshman year when I went out to a party with a friend. My friend and his girlfriend had just broken up and he was devastated. We decided to go to a party at UNC and help him get his mind off the subject. He drank a lot of alcohol before the party and even though I had seen him drink this much, I hadn’t seen him act this way before. After drinking he soon became very aggressive and belligerent (very atypical behavior for him) and eventually got himself in an altercation that lead to a fistfight. The next morning, except for cuts and bruises, he seemed to have forgotten the whole event and was “moving on.”

Testosterone

Now that I think back on the event, I’m thinking that the break up with his girlfriend triggered a surge of hormones that caused him to react the way he did. I’m not sure which hormones caused him to behave this way, but some studies have found that aggressive and irrational behavior in males aged 13 to 20 tends to rise when testosterone levels are high. Due to an increase in his testosterone levels, the fistfight may have acted as an outlet for all his built up tension, which allowed him to start getting over the break up. 

Testosterone