Does personality moderate the link between women's testosterone and relationship status? The role of extraversion and sensation seeking

Research shows that testosterone (T) is lower among partnered women, but not for women with a more unrestricted sociosexuality. There are fundamental personality traits, which are indices of mating effort and might moderate the association between T and relationship status. Two such traits are extraversion (E) and sensation seeking (SS). The present study tests if E and SS moderate the association of women's T with relationship status and parental care. Seventy-three Portuguese women completed a short form of the NEO-FFI and the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-V). Salivary T was assayed using luminescence immunoassays. Being involved in a committed relationship was related to lower T for the total sample, and for the subgroups low in E and SS, but not for the subgroups high in E and SS. Parental care was related to lower T in the subgroup low in E, and marginally in the subgroup low in SS. In multivariate analyses, only relationship status predicted T in the total sample and in the subgroups low in E and SS. The results were not confounded by age and oral contraception. These results provide support for lower T being important for monogamous pair bonding rather than for being partnered per se.