Raging Hormones

I remember playing basketball with some friends in junior high, and one friend was getting extremely angry as we were playing. He was normally fairly calm and a pretty decent basketball player. But during the game, the person defending him was clearly better than him, and he was getting extremely frustrated. Every time he missed a shot, he would swear and slam the ball on the ground. 

As the game progressed, he started getting more and more physical in his playing style, pushing and shoving more and more. He also became more and more competitive until after one last blocked shot, he finally snapped. He screamed that it was a foul and asked the person defending him if he was looking for a fight. My friends and I were able to break the two of them up and finish the game without things getting worse.

I think this was a case in which hormones were influencing my friend. It is likely that testosterone had a role in his behaviors because he was expressing a dominance reaction during the competitive interactions during basketball. There also may have been some cortisol affecting him because of his stress from being shut down during such a competitive sport like basketball. I thought it was amusing to see how greatly a person's composure can change given a certain context or situation.