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Coalitional Physical Competition

Acute Salivary Steroid Hormone Responses among Juvenile Male Soccer Players in Hong Kong

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Abstract

A large body of research links testosterone and cortisol to male-male competition. Yet, little work has explored acute steroid hormone responses to coalitional, physical competition during middle childhood. Here, we investigate testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), androstenedione, and cortisol release among ethnically Chinese boys in Hong Kong (N = 102), aged 8–11 years, during a soccer match (n = 84) and an intrasquad soccer scrimmage (n = 81), with 63 participants competing in both treatments. The soccer match and intrasquad soccer scrimmage represented out-group and in-group treatments, respectively. Results revealed that testosterone showed no measurable change. DHEA increased during both treatments in the majority of participants and the degree of change had no relation to independent variables (e.g., performance, age, treatment, outcome) or covariate measures (Body Mass Index, Pubertal Development Scale). Most boys experienced androstenedione increases during match play, but no significant differences during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage competitions. The magnitude of change differed significantly between treatments and was positively associated with age. These latter findings suggest boys’ androstenedione responses may be sensitive to competitor type (i.e., unknown competitors vs. peers). For most subjects, cortisol significantly increased during match play, decreased during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage, and differed significantly between treatments, suggesting each treatment promoted a different psychological state among competitors. Cortisol/DHEA molar ratio decreased during the intrasquad scrimmage, suggestive of a more relaxed mental state. These data shed new light on potential proximate mechanisms associated with coalitional competition among prepubescent boys, with relevance to adrenarche and life history theory.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the youth Hong Kong Soccer Association, coaches, parents, and players for their participation. In addition, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Hardaway Chun-Kwan Chan for making this project feasible, David Kimball for running the hormone assays at ZRT Laboratory and to Sherri Zava, Genevieve Neyland, and Wendy Norris for their continued support. Special thanks to Timothy Lo and Tommy Liu for their help in data collection, to Tony Tong for translating the information sheets distributed to participating children and their parents, and to the Wenner-Gren Foundation (dissertation fieldwork grant #9239) for supplying the funding to facilitate this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 455003, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-5003, USA

    Timothy S. McHale & Peter B. Gray

  2. Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Wai-chi Chee

  3. Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

    Ka-chun Chan

  4. ZRT Laboratory, Beaverton, OR, USA

    David T. Zava

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  1. Timothy S. McHale
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Correspondence to Timothy S. McHale.

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Appendix

Appendix

Correlations between Raw Pre-Competition Hormone Concentrations, Hormone Change, BMI, Age, and PDS across the Soccer Match and Intrasquad Soccer Scrimmage Treatments

This study identified several intriguing and novel exploratory relationships among baseline adrenal hormones, competition-induced hormone change, and covariates among this sample of boys. The results are reported in Table 2 (soccer match) and Table 3 (intrasquad soccer scrimmage). Consistent with reported increases in adrenal androgen production during juvenile development (i.e., adrenarche), pre-competition DHEA and pre-competition androstenedione concentrations were positively correlated across both treatments and positively associated with age and BMI. Pre-scrimmage DHEA, but not pre-scrimmage androstenedione, was also associated with age. Interestingly, pre-competition cortisol and pre-competition androstenedione were positively correlated, while pre-competition cortisol and androstenedione change were highly negatively correlated across both competitive treatments.

Table 3 Correlations between raw pre-scrimmage hormone concentrations (pg/mL), hormone change (pg/mL), BMI, Age, PDS
Full size table

Pre-scrimmage androstenedione was negatively correlated with the androstenedione change during the instrasquad soccer scrimmage only, which further confirms the relationships between androstenedione baseline levels and androstenedione acute reactive effects differ across competitive treatments. DHEA, androstenedione, and cortisol match change were significantly positively associated with age, but this relationship was not found during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage treatment. In other words, during match play only older boys experienced a greater degree of adrenal hormone increases. Perhaps, boys’ HPA axis responses tend to become more sensitive with age at times in which male-male coalitional competitions are highly meaningful and against unknown competitors.

Further, cortisol and androstenedione competition change were highly positively correlated during match play and the intrasquad soccer scrimmage. DHEA change was positively correlated with androstenedione change and cortisol change across both treatments. These findings reveal a significant relationship among acute DHEA change, androstenedione change, and cortisol change among a sample of prepubescent boys engaged in physical coalitional competition.

Similar results have been reported among a small sample of ethnically Chinese juvenile boys, aged 8–11 years, competing in a moderately physical table-tennis exhibition (N = 22), and in both boys (N = 18) and girls (N = 27), aged 9–10 years, during a non-physical math competition (McHale et al. 2018a, b). Therefore, competition induced cortisol and androstenedione change were positively correlated across all three competitive settings (soccer, table-tennis, and math competitions), irrespective of differences in energetic demands across competitions. No relationship was found among DHEA change and either cortisol or androstenedione change in the latter two studies. In the adult human competition and hormone literature, the dual-hormone hypothesis posits that a consistent relationship exists between cortisol as a predictor of testosterone change in response to physical and psychological stressors (e.g., Mehta and Josephs 2010; Mehta and Prasad 2015; Sherman et al. 2016). These findings may be of relevance for interpreting juvenile adrenal hormone responses to competition, where a consistent link is emerging between cortisol and androstenedione, rather than testosterone, during athletic and non-athletic competition during middle childhood.

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McHale, T.S., Chee, Wc., Chan, Kc. et al. Coalitional Physical Competition. Hum Nat 29, 245–267 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-018-9321-7

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