Stress Hormones Could Predict Boxing Dominance
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By Brian Mossop
- August 18, 2010 |
- 4:16 pm |
- Categories: Data, Science
On November 25, 1980, professional boxing’s two top welterweights, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Durán, squared off against each other in a rematch from five months prior, when the hard-hitting Panamanian won a 15-round, unanimous decision over the champion Leonard.
During the first fight, Leonard unsuccessfully went toe-to-toe with Durán, so the rematch obviously called for a change of strategy. The second time around, Leonard zipped around the ring, taunting Duran with both trash talk and wild punches. Durán became increasingly frustrated, and with only a few seconds to go in the eighth round, he turned his back on Leonard, walked toward his corner, and ended the fight by uttering the now famous words to referee Octavio Meyran: No mas, Spanish for No more. Durán’s refusal to fight stumped fans and his corner men alike. No injury occurred. No bloody gashes were to blame. Durán simply quit.
That was nearly 30 years ago, yet scientists have uncovered evidence that may spur a re-examination of the psychological aspect of competition, so utterly embodied by Durán’s shocking capitulation. What does it mean to be “psyched out”? Well, it may actually be linked to hormonal changes in the body.
A recent study by Victoria Wobber and colleagues from Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology showed that apes have rapid fluctuations in stress hormone levels right before a physical encounter, and whether the hormone increases or decreases pretty much dictates who will win – even before the competition begins.
Non-human primates in the ape superfamily are particularly well-suited for testing the physiology of competition, as these animals live in highly stratified communities, and a male quickly figures out his rank among his companions. Wobber’s study looked at the physiological changes in hormones circulating in the body in two of the closest relatives of humans, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). However, chimps and bonobos approach competition in two very different ways. Chimpanzees are highly aggressive, while bonobos get stressed out in situations where they must go head-to-head for limited food. Nonetheless, there is always a dominant male – and he’s the one that ends up with most of the food.
Armed with cotton swabs coated with pulverized Sweet Tarts candy, researchers took saliva samples minutes before two monkeys engaged in a staged competition for a pile of food. When dominant males won, there was a clear increase in the stress hormone right before the competition. In these cases, the dominant male was ready. He had sized up his opponent and knew, no doubt, that he’d prevail.
Conversely, when the dominant male lost, the hormone level decreased before the food game. Although these apes live in very well-defined social societies – and the dominant male had more than likely battled with this opponent before and won – something had psyched him out.
Human data shows that the level of both of these stress hormones – cortisol and testosterone – changes during competition. So while it’s hard to extrapolate the exact findings in this study to humans, chances are our hormones are also going up or down depending on whether we’re ready for competition or not.
Boxing fans may never know for sure why Durán walked away from his championship fight with Leonard. Perhaps, with Sweet Tarts and a simple hormonal test, we might have seen it coming.
Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
Citation: Wobber, V., Hare, B., Maboto, J., Lipson, S., Wrangham, R., & Ellison, P. (2010) Differential changes in steroid hormones before competition in bonobos and chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(28), 12457-12462. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1007411107
Brian Mossop is Community Manager at the Public Library of Science and blogs regularly at The Decision Tree. For more, follow on Twitter at @bmossop and @wiredplaybook and on Facebook.
Brian is a freelance science writer and the Community Manager at the Public Library of Science.Follow @bmossop on Twitter.
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