LAUSR

Predominant theories in the social endocrinology of competition and status, the biosocial model of status (Mazur, 1985;Mazur, this issue) and challenge hypothesis (Wingfield et al., 1990; Wingfield, this issue) have sought to explain the biological underpinnings of dominance-related behaviors by suggesting that these behaviors are driven by fluctuating levels of testosterone during periods of social competition. Although the challenge hypothesis was initially intended to describe increases in testosterone during reproductive or territorial challenges in male birds, it was later applied to humanmales to explain increases in testosterone in response to face-to-face competitions for social status (Archer, 2006). The biosocial model of status expands upon the notion that testosterone is linked to competitive behavior by proposing that testosterone increases in response to status gained through victory and decreases in response to status lost through defeat (Mazur and Booth, 1998). Although both theories primarily focus on male behavior, Allan Mazur, in his initial description of the biosocial model of status (1985) was open but cautious about the theory's relevance to females: