Humans are rare among mammals in exhibiting paternal care and the capacity for broad hyper-cooperation, which were likely critical to the evolutionary emergence of human life history. In humans and other species, testosterone is often a mediator of life history trade-offs between mating/competition and parenting. There is also evidence that lower testosterone men may often engage in greater prosocial behavior compared to higher testosterone men. Given the evolutionary importance of paternal care and heightened cooperation to human life history, human fathers’ testosterone may be linked to these two behavioral domains, but they have not been studied together. We conducted research among highly egalitarian Congolese BaYaka foragers and compared them with their more hierarchical Bondongo fisher-farmer neighbors. Testing whether BaYaka men’s testosterone was linked to locally-valued fathering roles, we found that fathers who were seen as better community sharers had lower testosterone than less generous men. BaYaka fathers who were better providers also tended to have lower testosterone. In both BaYaka and Bondongo communities, men in marriages with greater conflict had higher testosterone. The current findings from BaYaka fathers point to testosterone as a psychobiological correlate of cooperative behavior under ecological conditions with evolutionarily-relevant features in which mutual aid and sharing of resources help ensure survival and community health.

在哺乳动物中，人类很少表现出父性关怀和广泛的高度合作的能力，这可能对人类生命史的进化出现至关重要。在人类和其他物种中，睾酮通常是交配/竞争和养育之间生活史权衡的中介。还有证据表明，与睾酮水平较高的男性相比，睾酮水平较低的男性通常可能会表现出更强烈的亲社会行为。鉴于父亲照顾和加强合作对人类生活史的进化重要性，人类父亲的睾酮可能与这两个行为领域有关，但尚未对它们进行一起研究。我们对高度平等的刚果巴亚卡采集者进行了研究，并将他们与等级森严的邦东戈渔民邻居进行了比较。在测试巴亚卡男性的睾酮水平是否与当地重视的父亲角色有关时，我们发现被视为更好的社区分享者的父亲的睾酮水平低于不那么慷慨的男性。巴亚卡父亲的睾酮水平往往较低，他们的养育能力较好。在巴亚卡和邦东戈社区，婚姻冲突较大的男性睾酮水平较高。巴亚卡之父目前的研究结果指出，睾酮是生态条件下合作行为的心理生物学相关因素，具有进化相关的特征，其中互助和资源共享有助于确保生存和社区健康。