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Sex Hormones, Gender Differences, and Behavior Abstract Behavior is intricately woven of genetics, environment, and hormones. The interplay of the nervous and endocrine systems and the influence of sex hormones on behavior are examined here in depth. Hormones are intimately tied to sex characteristics and to behavior. The behavioral implications of the presence or lack of certain hormones at critical periods of development is explored. Hormonal influence on female cycles, reproduction, nursing, sexual behavior and sex differences are also examined. The intimate relationship between psychology and physiology becomes apparent. Sex Hormones, Gender Differences, and Behavior Organisms monitor the external state of the world and integrate the information they receive with their internal state. It is through the nervous system that humans contact our environment, the external world, and are adapted to function in it (Mani, Blaustein & O’Malley, 1997). Awareness of the tangible, through the network of nerves, spinal cord and brain, becomes awareness of information ceaselessly conveyed. Messages are carried along the millions of nerve pathways to the brain, and are then transformed in some mysterious way into information.