Sore Winners High Testosterone Levels Usually Translate Into More Confidence, Toughness And Competitiveness, Which May Also Help Explain Why It’S Usually The Winning Fans Who Trash Their Cities Following Big Victories

“Heroes, Rogues and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior” James McBride Dabbs (McGraw-Hill, 215 pages, $24.95)

Testosterone gets a bum rap sometimes, but nobody wants too little of it. Not in America, anyway.

What could be more American than confidence, toughness, competitiveness, energy and sex appeal — all the perks that a high testosterone level will give you?

And if a little outrageousness tags along, well, call it good old American individualism.

The almost-universal desire for a high testosterone level is only one curiosity unearthed by James McBride Dabbs in this irresistibly readable account of the sexiest of the sex hormones.

Another: When “your” sports team wins, your testosterone level — and your propensity to fight — goes up. (At last, we have an explanation of why it’s the winning fans that trash their city.)

Dabbs is a social psychologist, so he studies social relationships. Most of his research has focused on the usual explainers of human behavior: background, surroundings and personalities. But he’s added the effects of testosterone into the variables, convinced that biology has at least some role in destiny.

Testosterone is present in the womb starting mid-pregnancy, helping to turn the undifferentiated gonads of the fetus into testes. Baby boys have a second spike in testosterone a few months after birth, but that’s nothing compared to the tsunami of testosterone that appears at puberty. Adult men have eight to 10 times the testosterone of women but women are sensitive to far smaller amounts. Testosterone levels fall with age, illness, fatigue and defeat.

“Testosterone is a small molecule with large effects,” writes Dabbs, “which can be moderated by environmental factors, including parenting and education. It is related to things as diverse as criminal violence and the way people smile. It affects our ability with language and our ability to navigate in space. It helps predict what occupation we will enter and whether or not we will marry, have extramarital affairs, or divorce.”

Dabbs and his colleagues measured testosterone levels in more than 8,000 men, women and children. High-testosterone people tend, on average, to get into more fights and into more beds. They tend to be less patient with school and with many jobs, so they tend to be less educated and less successful. (Surgery, trial law, sports and acting are professions that attract high-testosterone people.)

Nice guys do really finish last in testosterone, though that’s not bad. “Low-testosterone people tend to be more friendly, more intellectual, and more interested in the welfare of others,” writes Dabbs. They have higher status occupations and longer-lasting, closer marriages. You may know them by their smiles, which are wider and crinkle the eyes more than high-testosterone people’s.

Is there a “best” amount of testosterone? Well, writes Dabbs, evolution moderates to the optimum, so the best amount might be a middle amount, especially if it comes with a high level of the brain chemical serotonin. The combination, at least as studied in vervet monkeys, makes for personalities that are in charge and in control.

Dabbs winds up with a discussion of the controls on testosterone: socialization, education and, particularly, good parenting. Dabbs’ coauthor and wife, Mary, deserves the last word on testosterone.

“It’s `guystuff,’ ” she says, “and `guystuff’ seems to be about building stuff, fixing stuff, and blowing stuff up. … A mother’s job is to encourage the building and fixing, and discourage the blowing up.”