JOURNAL OF

Journal of Research in Personality 37 (2003) 107115

RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY
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Brief report

Testosterone and the work of reghters: Fighting res and delivering medical careq
Noel Fannin and James M. Dabbs Jr.*
Psychology Department, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA

Abstract The present study related personality and testosterone to the work of ghting res and providing emergency medical service (EMS). One hundred ninety-ve urban male reghters completed questionnaires and provided saliva samples for testosterone assay and experts rated their reghting and EMS performance. Preference for reghting over EMS work was predicted by the characteristics of fearlessness, low communion, low openness, and low agreeableness. Fireghting performance was predicted by agency, fearlessness, extraversion, and low openness, and EMS performance was predicted by extraversion. Fireghting was also related to interactions of testosterone with extraversion and agency, and EMS performance was related to an interaction of testosterone with conscientiousness. Testosterone appears to facilitate the behavior of individuals along directions they are already inclined to take. 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
Keywords: Testosterone; Fireghters; EMS; Personality; Fearlessness; Big Five; Performance

1. Introduction Fireghting is viewed as heroic action, much like that of soldiers going o to war. Fireghters enter ames where the roaches and rats are eeing, as they describe the setting, evoking images of heroes committed to saving lives and property. Fighting
This research was supported in part by NSF Grant SBR-9511600. We thank the reghters of Dekalb County and Atlanta, Georgia, for their participation, and we are indebted to Fire Chief Carlos E. Perez for making the study possible. * Corresponding author. Fax: 1-404-651-1391. E-mail address: jdabbs@gsu.edu (J.M. Dabbs Jr.). 0092-6566/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00533-0
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res is only one of the activities of reghters, however, who also provide emergency medical services (EMS). Fighting res and delivering EMS are markedly dierent tasks. Both require a take-charge approach, but reghting involves more violent action and risk to ones life, and EMS involves more of an orientation toward helping others. Many children dream of growing up to become reghters, and those few who do so usually stay with the job, even though it involves long hours, low pay, and great danger. Part of the commitment of reghters comes from the training and rewards they receive, but part may be related to the kind of persons they are. Holland (1985) argues that occupations reect expressive components of personality and he describes the personality of reghters as realistic. Realistic means asocial, masculine, self-eacing, and uninvolved, and it has two subtypes, enterprising and adventurous. The enterprising subtype is adventurous, energetic, and optimistic, and the social subtype is cooperative, helpful, and responsible (Holland, 1973). The two subtypes seem to embody qualities that would be especially important, respectively, in ghting res and delivering medical care. In the present study we examined the personality of reghters and the issue of how testosterone might interact with other characteristics to predict performance. Rather than measuring Hollands realism directly, we took the approach of measuring a set of traditional personality variables that included fearlessness, agency, communion, and the Big Five personality dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These variables should tap most of the characteristics of Hollands Realistic types and they relate to other research that seems likely to bear upon the work of reghters. Fearlessness (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) should make it easier to enter dangerous situations and perform well there. Fireghters enter situations where temperatures exceed 1000 F, visibility is zero, oxygen is limited, and dangerous gases are approaching the point of combustion. Fireghters give credit for being able to function under such conditions to training, but many individuals could not face this much danger, regardless of training, unless they were also relatively fearless and had the ability to manage their fear. Agency and communion (Bakan, 1966) refer, respectively, to being independent and getting things done and to forming relationships and helping others. We expected agency to be related to ghting res and communion to be related to delivering medical care. Among the Big Five personality dimensions (Costa & McCrae, 1985), we expected the activity, assertiveness, and excitement seeking of extraversion to be especially relevant to ghting res, and we expected the sociability of extraversion, sensitivity of agreeableness, and responsibility of conscientiousness to be especially relevant to helping injured persons. We examined testosterone as a biological variable that might have main eects and interactions with other personal characteristics. Testosterone is widespread in nature, being present in most animals and even many plants. In people it is generally associated with masculine characteristics. High levels of testosterone cause the genetic XY fetus to develop a male rather than a female body. Exposure to high levels of testosterone will lead the genetic XX fetus to develop into a child who engages in rough and tumble play and displays toy preferences typical of boys (Hines, 1990). Its main physiological eect among adult people and other animals is the development of muscle, but it has psychological and behavioral eects via receptors in the lower centers of the brain, which in

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turn moderate the activity of other parts of the brain, which in turn aect thought and behavior. Its eects are similar among males and females. In general, these eects include boldness (Boissy & Bouissou, 1994; Dabbs, Bernieri, Strong, Campo, & Milun, 2001) and focussed attention (Andrew, 1978), both of which are associated with dominance and success in one-on-one encounters (Mazur, 1985; Mazur & Booth, 1998). Among people, testosterone has been associated with sexual activity, athletic activity, delinquency, violence, and behaviors as diverse as choosing an occupation, getting married, practicing law, and meeting a stranger (Booth & Dabbs, 1993; Dabbs, 1992; Dabbs, Alford, & Fielden, 1998; Dabbs et al., 2001; Dabbs, Carr, Frady, & Riad, 1995; Dabbs & Dabbs, 2000; Dabbs & Morris, 1990). Among reghters, it might add to the energy needed to get things done. Perhaps more importantly, it also interacts with other characteristics, sometimes enabling relationships and sometimes being held in check when its unrestrained eects would be detrimental. Such interactions have been observed, for example, where testosterone along with socioeconomic status predicted delinquency (Dabbs & Morris, 1990) and where testosterone required the presence of power motivation in order to respond to competition (Schultheiss, Campbell, & McClelland, 1999). Our study was largely exploratory, but we generally expected that testosterone would energize or facilitate the behavioral tendencies inherent in other personality characteristics. This is similar to the views of Lykken (1982, 1995) and Lilienfeld (1996) that rambunctious and risk-taking tendencies can be channeled along either prosocial or antisocial directions, leading to criminal violence or to heroic prosocial behavior. In the present case, testosterone might encourage subjects to implement personal tendencies that commit them to vigorous reghting or emergency medical activities.

2. Methods 2.1. Overview Subjects were 195 male metropolitan county reghters. Their mean age was 37.9 years (SD 8:6, range 2056) and they had been reghters a mean of 13.9 years (SD 8:5, range 131). A female researcher met potential subjects individually or in groups at their re stations, explained the study to them, and invited them to participate. Each subject read and signed a consent form and received $10.00 to provide a saliva sample for testosterone assay and completed a 45-min questionnaire. If testing sessions were interrupted by reghting demands or other emergencies, subjects kept the questionnaires and completed later. We subsequently obtained expert ratings of subjects reghting and EMS performance. 2.2. Questionnaire measures Questionnaires asked about subjects background, work experience, and personality. Subjects provided information on open-ended items regarding their occupational specialty, training they had received, heroic rescues they had participated in,

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awards or commendations they had received, and names of other reghters whom they considered heroes. They completed optical scan sheets to respond to items on preference for reghting vs. EMS work, fearlessness, agency, communion, the Big Five personality dimensions, optimism, and childhood experiences with responsibility, parental closeness, and parental control. The questionnaire was not timed, but subjects were asked not to spend too much time on any one item. Findings regarding the open-ended items, optimism, and early family experience were largely negative and will not be discussed further here. Relative preference for reghting vs. EMS was measured on a ve-point scale. Preliminary discussions indicated that all subjects preferred reghting to EMS work, but within this limitation they varied considerably in how much they liked EMS work. We therefore anchored the scale at the endpoints with would rather not have EMT calls and like EMT about as much as re and at the midpoint with some EMT is okay, but much prefer re. Higher scores indicated relatively greater preference for reghting vs. EMS work. Fearfulness was measured using subjects reactions to 18 statements about risky, exciting, or frightening activities, such as, Many people think of me as a daredevil, and I bet it would be fun to pilot a small airplane alone. Subjects indicated on four-point scales whether each item was false, mostly false, mostly true, or true. This scale has good reliability and construct validity and has proved useful in clinical research (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Agency and communion were measured using a scale derived from Vogt and Colvins (1999) ranking of 100 California Q-Sort items in terms of how well they matched Bakans (1966) description of agency and communion. We selected ve items each for high agency (e.g., behaves in assertive fashion, energetic and fast-paced), low agency (e.g., basically nervous, delays or avoids acting), high communion (e.g., generous towards others, sympathetic and considerate), and low communion (e.g., hostile towards others, keeps people at a distance). Subjects indicated how well each item described them on ve-point scales that ranged from not at all and very much. Neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were measured using the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1991). Subjects indicated degree of agreement or disagreement with each of 60 items on ve-point scales that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The NEO items were included after the study had begun and responses were available only on the last 137 subjects. 2.3. Performance ratings Fireghting skill level was dened by the mean score from six expert judges who were senior members of the department and who knew many of the subjects. Judges rated each subject they knew on a scale from 1 to 4, where 1 indicated a check chaser, who was there only for the paycheck, had no interest in ghting res, and would sometimes go out of his way to avoid re ghting; 2 indicated a good reghter, who was capable but not among the best; 3 indicated a professional reghter,

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who was one of the best; and 4 indicated a hot dog, whose enthusiasm and unrealistically positive view of himself might lead him into unnecessarily dangerous situations. Ratings were available on 162 subjects and the alpha coecient indicating agreement among judges was .78. Estimated reliability of the mean judgments of the six judges, based on the SpearmanBrown formula, was r :96. EMS skill level was dened by the mean score from two expert judges who were knowledgeable about EMS work and had trained or supervised most of the subjects. Similar to the reghting ratings, judges rated each subject they knew on a scale from 1 to 4, where 1 indicated a check chaser, who was there only for the paycheck, took no interest in the job, and might be dangerous in treating the patient; 2 indicated a good EMT, who was a technician capable of performing EMS duties adequately; 3 indicated a professional EMT, who was a very knowledgeable person that other reghters would want to have treating them; and 4 indicated Jr. doc, who might sometimes try to act like a physician and go beyond his skill level in treating patients. Ratings were available on 193 of the subjects and the agreement between judges was r :50. Estimated reliability of the mean judgments of the two judges, based on the SpearmanBrown formula, was r :68. We developed these scales out of discussions with informants in the re department and they reected categories that seemed natural to the informants. The four categories on each scale represent a combination of increasing skill and enthusiasm, with enthusiasm sometimes taking performance over the top at level 4, where performance is excellent but elements of risk-taking may cause problems. Because of this, we regard the scales as best described as measuring enthusiastic reghting and enthusiastic EMS work. 2.4. Testosterone Testosterone levels were assayed from salvia samples. Campbell, Udry, and Halpern (1992) report a correlation of r :85 between serum and salivary testosterone measurements, and saliva is much easier to collect than serum. Each subject chewed a piece of sugar-free gum to stimulate the ow of salvia and deposited 3 ml of salvia into a 20-ml polyethylene vial. Samples were collected at times ranging from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Samples were assayed in duplicate using a standard radioimmunoassay procedure with ether extraction, 125 I-labeled testosterone tracer, and charcoal separation (Dabbs, 1990a). Between-duplicates CV was less than 10%. Because adult testosterone levels decline across the day (Dabbs, 1990a) and across the lifespan (Dabbs, 1990b), we performed a multiple regression of testosterone onto time and age and used the residual scores that remained after time and age were removed in subsequent statistical analyses.

3. Results We examined predictors of reghtingEMS preferences and predictors of success in reghting and EMS work. Table 1 summarizes relations of job preference and

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Table 1 Pearson productmoment correlations between personality and occupational measures Personality Occupational scores FireEMS preference Testosterone Fearlessness Agency Communion Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness .05 .20** ).06 ).28*** ).13 .00 ).28*** ).22* ).04 Fireghting performance .03 .33*** .19** ).16 ).07 .27** ).26** ).18 .06 EMS performance .00 .11 .08 ).09 .11 .17* ).10 ).11 .13

Note. In computing the above correlations, ns 195 for testosterone, fearlessness, and agency-communion; 137 for the remaining personality variables; 192 for reghting preference; 164 for reghting performance; and 193 for EMS performance.

job performance to testosterone, fearlessness, agency, communion, and the Big Five personality characteristics. Preference for reghting over EMS work was correlated positively with fearlessness and negatively with communion, openness, and agreeableness. Ratings of performance in reghting were correlated positively with fearlessness, agency, and extraversion and negatively with communion and openness. Ratings of performance in EMS work were correlated positively only with extraversion. Agency and communion were positively correlated with each other (r :28, df 195, p < :001), although they are conceptually independent and diered in their correlations with the occupational measures. The correlations in Table 1 showed no relation between testosterone and the occupational measures. However, because we expected testosterone to interact with personality characteristics, we examined how the personality correlations with occupational measures might dier at dierent levels of testosterone. We found that testosterone interacted with fearlessness, agency, and conscientiousness. These ndings are summarized in Fig. 1, which shows relations among subjects above or below the median in testosterone. Agency and fearlessness were linked to reghting, and conscientiousness to EMS work, but this was true only among subjects who were high in testosterone. The statistical signicance of these patterns was tested using the SAS General Linear Model procedure (SAS Institute, 1985), in each case testing a model that predicted performance from testosterone (treated as a continuous variable), the personality variable, and the interaction of the two. Interactions of testosterone with agency and fearlessness signicantly predicted reghter ratings, F 1; 163 4:26; p < :05, and F 1; 163 7:29; p < :01, respectively. The interaction of testosterone with conscientiousness predicted EMS ratings to a marginally signicant degree, F 1; 133 3:04; p < :10. The lack of signicance may be partly due to the fact that a smaller n completed the conscientiousness than the agency and fearlessness measures.

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Fig. 1. Moderating eects of testosterone level on reghting and EMS performance. Fearlessness, agency, and conscientiousness predict performance among high but not low testosterone individuals.

4. Discussion The personality of reghters was related to their preference for reghting vs. EMS work and to the nature of their performance in these two kinds of work. Individuals who preferred reghting more strongly were more fearless and less communal, open, and agreeable than others. Job performance was related to personality, more so for reghting than for EMS. Fireghter performance ratings were correlated with fearlessness, agency, extraversion, and low communion and openness. EMS performance ratings were correlated with extraversion. The wide age range of reghters studied, from 20 to 56 years, adds to the generality of these ndings. Testosterone was not directly related to job preference or performance, but it interacted with personality characteristics so as to enhance their ability to predict performance. Testosterone interacted with fearlessness and agency to predict reghting performance, and testosterone interacted with conscientiousness to predict EMS performance. Testosterone appears to serve as a moderator variable, enabling action that individuals are inclined toward but nd dicult to accomplish without testosterone. Perhaps fearlessness and agency make subjects receptive toward reghting, and the addition of testosterone enables them to pursue the reghting energetically. In the same fashion, conscientiousness could make subjects receptive toward helping, and the addition of testosterone enable them to pursue the helping energetically. In other studies testosterone has been found to have predictive value in interaction with

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other variables, as when testosterone with low socioeconomic status predicts delinquency (Dabbs & Morris, 1990), testosterone with low cortisol predicts delinquency (Dabbs, Jurkovic, & Frady, 1991), testosterone with power motivation predicts competitive behavior (Schultheiss et al., 1999), and testosterone with low parental involvement predicts dangerous behavior among adolescents (Booth, Johnson, Granger, Crouter, & McHale, 2001). Ratings of job performance in the present study were limited in being based upon informal judgments by peers and supervisors rather than objective re department records. The meanings that judges applied to the rating scales is also somewhat unclear. We developed the scales out of interviews with reghting and EMS experts regarding their perception of variations in job performance, and the scales confounded skill with energy. The highest rating categories included elements of excessive enthusiasm, describing individuals who might not show the restraint needed for ideal performance in dangerous situations, and thus the ratings might best regarded as indicators of enthusiastic performance. In reghting and EMS work there is likely an anity between energy and excellence, but in other domains too much energy could quickly lead to deterioration in performance. Care should be taken extrapolating the present ndings to other areas, where it will be important to specify aspects of personality and performance that are likely most germane to testosterone in each kind of work. There were too few women in the re department to allow a meaningful study of testosterone among female reghters. Testosterone has similar eects in men and women, and one would expect it to relate to performance among women in much the same way as it does among men. However, there may be gender dierences in interests and motives related to work, and testosterone may interact with these differences to provide other predictions about work preferences and performance. In order to study adequately the role of testosterone among women, it will be necessary to examine occupations that have either a preponderance of women or a more equal representation of women and men.

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