Back to School: Why Hormones and Social Status Matter for Teen Engagement
Last week, I got to kick off the school year with advisors at the American International School of Guangzhou's Secondary School, exploring something I think we all can easily take for granted: adolescent development.
When I first started Sea Change, I came in with the assumption that educators (including myself) were typically up to speed on this topic. However, I quickly learned that most teacher training programs for secondary school teachers don't cover adolescent development extensively, and the research in this field grows more sophisticated every year. Unless we stay on top of new developments, we can easily fall behind.
I always try to ground our work in adolescent development because when we understand what's actually happening in our teenagers' brains and bodies, we can stop fighting against their natural tendencies and start designing learning experiences that work with their development instead of against it.
One of the most important parts of our AISG workshop centered on hormones, specifically testosterone, and how they make teens incredibly sensitive to social status. Once you understand this connection, so many classroom behaviors suddenly make sense.
The Hormone-Status Connection: What's Really Going On
When I ask a room of educators, as I did last week in Guangzhou, what adjective they associate with testosterone, several people often call out "aggression." While it's true that we may see more aggressive behavior in people experiencing an increase in testosterone, this is really a secondary effect. The main and most significant role that testosterone plays in adolescent behavior is that it makes us more sensitive to social status.
David Yeager, the experimental adolescent development psychologist, has written extensively on this topic, including work with Dr. Carol Dweck and Dr. Ronald Dahl, and most recently in his excellent book, Ten to Twenty-Five: The Science of Motivating Young People.
Yeager and colleagues' research shows that testosterone amplifies our drive to attain, maintain, and defend social status. It makes adolescents hyperattuned to status-relevant cues like facial expressions, tone of voice, and any signals that might suggest disrespect or incompetence.
Think about that student who suddenly becomes hypersensitive to being called out in front of peers, or the one who seems to care more about looking cool than presenting their learning. They're not being difficult on purpose. Their hormone-influenced brains are literally scanning for status threats and opportunities.
What might be the most fascinating insight in Yeager’s research is that testosterone doesn't directly dictate specific behaviors. In Yeager's studies,
boys with high levels of testosterone surrounded by deviant peers showed more aggression, but the same boys in different contexts demonstrated prosocial leadership. The hormone amplifies motivation to gain status, but the context determines how that plays out.
Yeager’s research affirms what many educators intuitively know: testosterone magnifies responsiveness to respectful treatment. In one study, adults were asked to do something unpleasant (eat Vegemite - apologies to our Australian colleagues, but this study was conducted in the US where taste preferences differ!) and were 60% more likely to engage when spoken to respectfully rather than given blunt commands. When adolescents perceive that adults treat them with respect and dignity, they're far more willing to make healthy choices and engage meaningfully in learning.
What This Means for Our Classrooms
The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to put this research into practice. Responsive Classroom teaches us that the first six weeks are critical for setting tone, establishing routines, and building community. Understanding how testosterone influences status sensitivity gives us a powerful lens for approaching all three of these foundational elements.
Use Respectful, High-Expectation Language Frame feedback with belief in students' potential and high standards. Instead of "You need to work harder on this," try "I'm giving you this feedback because I have high standards and I know you can reach them." Research shows this "wise feedback" style leads to better engagement, especially among students who feel stereotyped or disrespected.
Honor Autonomy and Student Voice Invite students to reflect, decide, or advocate for others. Let them co-author classroom norms or provide opportunities for students to mentor, teach, or read to younger kids. Respecting autonomy signals trust and status, both highly motivating during this developmental stage.
Two particularly effective approaches (outlined in this research article) are having students generate their own reasons for positive behaviors (rather than being told what to do) and creating opportunities for peer influence. For example, instead of lecturing about healthy choices, have students write persuasive letters to younger peers about why choosing not to vape is smart or empowering. Or showcase videos of respected older students talking about inclusive practices or growth mindset beliefs.
Avoid Infantilizing Messaging Skip lectures on what students already know and focus instead on why it matters to them and what it says about who they are. Repeating obvious content can feel disrespectful and demotivating to teens trying to assert their maturity. Adolescents reject messages that seem to question their competence or awareness. Investing in getting to know your students and asking them what they already know about a topic, will help you avoid any missteps. You can adapt the common strategy and graphic organizer of KWL (What do you Know, What do you Want to know, and What did you Learn) to help students take ownership of their learning process.
Redesign Discipline to Emphasize Dignity Shift from punitive approaches to ones that explain high expectations, acknowledge students' dignity, and offer structured support for learning from mistakes. Try: "Here's why this rule exists. I believe you're capable of meeting this standard, and I want to work with you to get there." Respectful language leads to improvement in constructive behavior, especially for students who have experienced prejudice or bias from teachers in the past.
Leverage Peer Norms Strategically Showcase examples of respected older peers making healthy, kind, or growth-oriented choices. Teens are more influenced by high-status peer models than adult lectures. (For example, programs like the truth® campaign succeeded by making healthy behavior seem cool, rebellious, and admired. You can read more about those efforts and impact here.)
The Bottom Line
AISG Secondary School Teachers at last week’s workshop
At the AISG workshop, we asked teachers to reflect on some of the behaviors they witness from teens and to ask themselves, given what they understand now about adolescent development, how might that behavior be motivated by young people's desire for status and respect? Or to put it more broadly, to ask what Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist specializing in parent-child relationships and founder of Good Inside, prompts us:
"What is the most generous interpretation of this behavior?"
As Yeager writes "Testosterone is often stereotyped as an 'aggression' or 'sex' hormone, but a growing line of research in both humans and animals suggests it increases the motivation to search for, learn about, and maintain status in one's social environment."
This reframe changes everything. When we understand that our teenagers aren't being irrational or difficult, but are responding to powerful biological drives for status and respect, we can design our classrooms accordingly. Yeager offers us hope:
"When adults honor adolescents' sensitivity to feeling high status and respected, we may find that adolescents show far greater self-regulation, ability to think about the future, and capacity to change than we imagined."
Sea Change Mentoring is rooted in helping schools create relationship-rich environments, because we know that when we do, kids are better able to learn and be well. For teens, learning and wellbeing depend on feeling that they matter and can make meaningful contributions to our school community.
Our teenagers are navigating a complex developmental stage, and when we work with their biology rather than against it, we unlock their tremendous capacity for growth, connection, and positive contribution.
What's one strategy from this post that you're excited to try this school year? I'd love to hear how it goes.
Want to bring these workshops (and more) to your school? Reach out to info@seachangementoring.com for more information.
References
Anderson, M., & Responsive Classroom. (2015). The First Six Weeks of School. Center for Responsive Schools.
Finley, T. (2014, August 12). The science behind classroom norming. Edutopia.
Gonzalez, J. (2020, February 3). Making cooperative learning work better. Cult of Pedagogy.
Kennedy, B. (2022). Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be.
Yeager, D. S. (2022). Ten to Twenty-Five: The Science of Motivating Young People.
Yeager, D. S., Dahl, R. E., & Dweck, C. S. (2018). Why interventions to influence adolescent behavior often fail but could succeed. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(1), 101-122. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617722620
Yeager, D. S., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., Brzustoski, P., Master, A., Hessert, W. T., Williams, M. E., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of mistrust: Wise interventions to provide critical feedback across the racial divide. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 804-824. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033906
