Welling, L. L. (2013). Psychobehavioral effects of hormonal contraceptive use. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 11(3), 718-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491301100315
Welling LL. Psychobehavioral effects of hormonal contraceptive use. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior. 2013;11(3):718-42. doi:10.1177/147470491301100315
Welling, Lisa L. M. "Psychobehavioral effects of hormonal contraceptive use." Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, vol. 11, no. 3, 2013, pp. 718-42.
For EndNote, Zotero or Mendeley:
Open access
No open license is recorded for this paper. Reuse terms are set by the publisher.
Open Access
Free full text on PubMed Central (PMC10481013)
RRM Academy Synopsis
Hormonal contraceptives may affect mood, desire and mate choice
Women on hormonal contraceptives report more depression and less sexual interest, a 2013 review of human and primate studies finds. The review also covers mate choice and couples. The author calls much of the evidence correlational and tentative.
Key Findings
Hormonal contraceptive users describe higher rates of depression than normally cycling women, and oral contraceptive users showed significantly attenuated cortisol responses to stressors compared with controls.
Reported or apparent reduced sexual interest appears in humans and other primates. Human users also report more sexual partners and more interest in short-term relationships, which may reflect who chooses them.
Users show weaker or no cycle-linked preferences for masculine faces and voices. Normally cycling lap dancers earned more per shift in the fertile phase, while pill users showed no earnings peak.
Users report more frequent mate retention tactics directed at partners, and men partnered with users report more mate retention behaviors in general.
No study directly tests the effect of hormonal contraceptive use on offspring health or success in any primate species.
Interpretation
The paper is a narrative review that describes the literature without pooling results. The author calls much of the research correlational and tentative. Women who choose hormonal contraceptives may differ from other women in ways that drive the findings. Experiments in nonhuman primates show effects on behavior, with some mixed results, and how far they apply to humans is untested. Claims about partner choice and offspring are hypotheses. The author suggests a placebo-controlled, double-blind trial could be the most effective test. The review also lists benefits, including lower ovarian and endometrial cancer risk, and says effects should be weighed against them.
RRM Context
Restorative Reproductive Medicine treats the ovulatory cycle as a vital sign. The review says hormonal contraceptives, a type of suppressive medication, flatten hormone levels and stop ovulation. Shifts tied to the cycle in naturally cycling women are mostly missing in users. Partners also reported differences. The author asks for within-woman studies.
Our editorial summary of this paper, not the article's abstract.
Abstract
Although female use of hormonal contraceptives (HCs) has been associated with a variety of physical side effects, the psychological and behavioral side effects have received comparatively little attention until recently. Indeed, the long-term impact of HC use on human psychology has been vastly under-researched and has only recently become a focus for mainstream scholars. Women who use HCs report higher rates of depression, reduced sexual functioning, and higher interest in short-term sexual relationships compared to their naturally-cycling counterparts. Also, HC use may alter women's ability to attract a mate, as well as the mate retention behaviors in both users and their romantic partners. Some evidence even suggests that HC use alters mate choice and may negatively affect sexual satisfaction in parous women, with potential effects on future offspring. Interestingly, HCs have become a standard method of population control for captive nonhuman primates, opening up exciting avenues for potential comparative research. Here, the existing literature on the psychobehavioral effects of HCs in humans and nonhuman primates is reviewed and discussed. The potential resulting downstream consequences for the path of human evolution and recommendations for how future research could tease apart the underlying causes of these psychobehavioral effects of HC use are discussed, including suggestions for research involving nonhuman primates.
