Those who remember the street parties of Election Night 2008 might think the testosterone levels of Obama voters had shot up in triumph. That would be wrong.

Instead, liberal testosterone levels stayed stable, while those of male Republican voters plummeted. The latter also reported feeling submissive and unhappy.

There are many ways to read these results, which are based on saliva samples taken from 183 men and women as the polls closed, and again when President Obama's victory was officially announced.

First, male voters get the same vicarious boost from a candidate's political victory as they would their favorite sports team beating a rival. That's the main academic finding of the study, published Wednesday in Public Library of Science ONE, but one that seems rather self-evident.

Much more interesting is the split. Obama voter testosterone merely stabilized. The researchers suggest that, as nighttime testosterone levels typically dip, stabilization "is conceptually similar to a rise."

But if testosterone usually just dips at night, it positively plummeted for Republican men.

Indeed, Republican men "felt significantly more controlled, submissive, unhappy and unpleasant at the moment of the outcome" than those who voted for Obama, the researchers wrote. "Moreover, since the dominance hierarchy shift following a presidential election is stable for four years, the stress of having one's political party lose control of executive policy decisions could plausibly lead to continued testosterone suppression in males."

Women of both political parties, it should be noted, experienced no significant testosterone changes on election night.

Image: Mborowick/Flickr

See Also:

*Citation: "Dominance, Politics, and Physiology: Voters' Testosterone Changes on the Night of the 2008 United States Presidential Election." By Steven J. Stanton, Jacinta C. Beehner, Ekjyot K. Saini, Cynthia M. Kuhn, Kevin S. LaBar. PLoS ONE, October 21, 2009. *

Brandon Keim's Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.