Pituitary-Adrenocortical Effects on Intermale Agonistic Behavior

Abstract

Until the mid-1960s, it was widely believed that the gonadal hormones, particularly the androgens, were the only hormones involved in the control of aggressive behavior. This belief was based on the rather full literature establishing that these hormones are important to aggression, and the effects of no other subsystem had received experimental attention. In the past 15 years, however, it has been established that there are indeed many other kinds of hormonal effects on aggressive behavior, and many of those are discussed in other chapters of this book. This chapter is concerned with the effects of the hormones of the pituitary-adrenocortical axis, ACTH and corticosterone.