© JAKOB SKOGHEIMAs a high schooler in Toronto, Sari van Anders had some unusual aspirations. “I thought I’d be a biological anthropologist by day and an art critic by night,” she says. It didn’t quite pan out that way. But straddling disciplines in eyebrow-raising ways would become a hallmark of van Anders’s scientific career. Ultimately, she settled on social neuroendocrinology, which blends biological approaches with social contexts, and made it her goal to unravel the complex interplay between hormones, sexuality, and social behavior.
As a budding feminist and undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario, van Anders was drawn to psychology and the evolution of sex and gender differences. She did her PhD under Neil Watson at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where she investigated the influence of sexual and intimate experiences on hormones in humans. “Sari was a spectacular graduate student,” says Watson. “She leapt far beyond what I had in mind and created an ambitious, highly novel research program for herself.”
Among other things, van Anders found that sexual intercourse increased testosterone levels in women compared to control activities, such as exercise akin to a brisk, 15-minute walk.1 Cuddling had the same effect, suggesting that the physical intimacy component of intercourse, rather than the exertion component ...
