Figure 2.

A predictive framework for the effects of glucocorticoids (GCs) on different categories of social behavior. (a) At the level of initial social tendencies to approach conspecifics (proactive personality), increasing GCs are expected to be inversely associated with social behavior (“The inhibitory role of GCs”). (b) In the context of parental care, GCs may affect this form of social behavior in a nonlinear fashion, facilitating it in moderate levels but inhibiting it at very low or very high levels. (c) In the context of pair‐bonding or affiliative behavior, GCs may inhibit social behavior in sexual contexts but facilitate it in nonsexual contexts (see Figure 1 for description of these two types of affiliation). The latter trend is likely limited to a threshold level of GCs beyond which GCs no longer promote social behavior. Furthermore, solely nonsocial environmental stressors are likely to have more negative effect on affiliation than social stressors. (d) In the context of group‐level cooperation, GCs increase social behavior without a threshold level (“The facilitating role of GCs”)