ArticleHormones and behavior2019
Adult attachment and testosterone reactivity: Fathers' avoidance predicts changes in testosterone during the strange situation procedure.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Testosterone Changes in Couples in Response to a Caregiving Task with an Infant Simulator.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Adrenocortical interdependence in father-infant and mother-infant dyads: Attunement or something more?Developmental psychobiology · 2021Article
- Sharing and caring: Testosterone, fathering, and generosity among BaYaka foragers of the Congo Basin.Scientific reports · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
We assessed parents' testosterone reactivity to the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), a moderately stressful parent-infant interaction task that pulls for parental nurturance and caregiving behavior. Parents (146 mothers, 154 fathers) interacted with their 1-year-old infants, and saliva samples were obtained pre- and post-task to assess changes in testosterone. We examined whether testosterone reactivity differed between mothers and fathers, the extent to which parents' characteristic approaches to closeness (i.e., adult attachment orientation) contributed to testosterone changes, and whether any influences of adult attachment orientation were independent of more general personality characteristics (i.e., the Big Five personality dimensions). Results revealed that mothers and fathers showed comparable declines in testosterone during the SSP, and that these declines were attenuated among fathers with a more avoidant attachment orientation (i.e., those less comfortable with closeness). Associations between fathers' avoidance and testosterone reactivity were statistically independent of broader personality traits. Our findings provide some of the first evidence for short-term changes in both mothers' and fathers' testosterone in contexts that pull for nurturance. Moreover, these findings demonstrate that individual differences in adult attachment may play an important role in understanding such changes. We discuss possible explanations for gender differences in associations between adult attachment and parents' testosterone reactivity, and the extent to which testosterone reactivity might be sensitive to changes in context for mothers versus fathers.
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Registered trials
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