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Regardless of your sex, if you have elevated testosterone levels in your blood, you're more likely to think a face with a neutral expression is instead looking threatening.
Robert Sapolsky
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Interpretation

What this quote means

High testosterone levels can influence how we perceive neutral facial expressions, making them seem threatening.

This quote by Robert Sapolsky highlights the psychological and physiological effects of elevated testosterone levels on perception. It suggests that individuals with higher testosterone may misinterpret neutral facial cues as aggressive or threatening, indicating a significant interplay between our biology and social interactions.

Themes

TestosteronePerceptionFacial ExpressionsPsychologyAggression

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the effects of hormones on behavior during a psychology lecture.

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I expected social rank to be the determining factor in health, and in some ways that's true. But far more important is what sort of society that rank occurs in. Being low ranking in a benevolent troop is a hell of a lot better for your blood pressure than being low ranking in an aggressive troop.
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