ABSTRACT
The study of sexual behavior is subjected to the same scientific analysis as any other behavioral system. This objectivity about sexual behavior has allowed investigators to divest the subject of some of its social trappings, enabling the clearer understanding and analysis of the role of hormones in modulating sexual behavior. It is becoming increasingly apparent that, aside from regulating fertility, the most profound effects of gonadal hormones on both males and females are psychological. Hormones influence both sexual interest in others and the willingness to engage in sexual activity. The former, heavily mechanistic view of the endocrinology of sexual behavior, in which hormones statically regulated the expression of stereotyped sexual patterns, has been enlarged and adapted to a more modern view in which hormones set the basic responsiveness of individuals to their sexual environment, with the final pattern of response then to be determined by the current context and the individual’s history and motivational state. According to this view, hormones are not seen as the sole regulators of sexual behavior but instead are integral parts of the complex of social and physiological systems that coordinate sexual behavior within the contexts of society and the biology of reproduction.
