The takeaway: caregiving experience seems to help people lean into nurturance and hormones follow. T isn't just up or down with caregiving; it depends on whether the moment feels nurturant vs. overwhelming. š
The simulator is programmed to cry, need feeding, diapering, burping, and soothing. Couples did a 10-min caregiving task in the lab Friday, took the baby for the weekend, then came back Monday for a second task. We measured testosterone (via saliva) before & after each task. š¶
Past work suggests testosterone drops in nurturant contexts and rises in challenging ones ā but findings with dyadic caregiving have been mixed. šš§āš¤āš§
psych post-bacc jobs are scattered across wikis, twitter/bsky, and random lab sites. hard to find if you're not already in the field.
I started a slack to pool them in one place ā a low-effort bulletin board, channels by subfield, updated live!
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Finding 1: Both men and women showed significant T declines after the second caregiving session ā but not the first.
We gave 30 couples without kids an infant simulator for the weekend and tracked how they handled it. Nope, this isn't a reality show: it's a scientific paper! š¼
New in Human Nature šš
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