Dominance, politics, and physiology: voters' testosterone changes on the night of the 2008 United States presidential election.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Prospective observational natural experiment tracking pre- and post-event hormone changes (graded by design analogy).
PubMed 19844583 · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007543
What was done
Researchers measured salivary testosterone levels in 183 participants on the night of the 2008 United States presidential election. Participants provided multiple saliva samples before and after the election outcome was announced to examine endocrine responses to vicarious winning and losing across male and female voters supporting different candidates.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical values, effect sizes, or p-values. Directionally, male voters supporting Barack Obama (the winner) exhibited stable post-outcome testosterone levels, whereas male voters supporting losing candidates (John McCain and Robert Barr) showed a drop in testosterone. No significant testosterone changes were observed in female voters.
Why it matters
This study provides evidence that vicarious participation in large-scale societal dominance hierarchies can trigger rapid physiological hormone shifts in men, mirroring responses previously documented in direct interpersonal competitions.
Limits
The abstract provides no exact quantitative hormone concentrations, baseline distributions, or statistical effect sizes. The sample is observational and subject to unmeasured election-night confounders such as alcohol consumption, circadian disruption, and emotional stress, and the findings showed no detectable effect in female voters.
Cited by
- partial Studies show that testosterone levels rise in voters whose candidate wins a presidential election and fall in voters whose candidate loses.