Two-faced testosterone can make you nice or nasty

(I-Newswire) March 8, 2010 - Is aggression always the best response to a challenge? Testosterone may not necessarily cause aggression but behavior can drive testosterone secretion.

In an evaluation for Faculty of 1000, Robert Sapolsky highlights a study published in Nature which assessed how testosterone affects human behavior in a ‘pro-social’ situation – a situation where it’s beneficial to help someone else.

In an ‘Ultimatum Game’, a ‘proposer’ is given power to decide how a sum of money is divided between them and another player. The ‘decider’ can either accept the offer, and possibly receive less than a fair share; or reject it, in which case both players get nothing.

Women who were given testosterone (without knowing it) made fairer offers (a pro-social decision) than women who received a placebo. Interestingly, women who believed that testosterone has anti-social, aggression-causing effects and who thought they’d received testosterone made offers that were less fair, even when they had received a placebo.

When given to the subject in a blind trial, testosterone can encourage pro-social as well as anti-social behaviour. However, as the authors note, “biology seems to exert less control over human behavior,” since awareness of having received testosterone drastically altered behavior.

So, not only can our own behavior be confounded by our prejudices but the effects of testosterone may be far more complex than previously thought. As Sapolsky says: “Despite the seeming power of the proposer, the decider ultimately has the most power, and the proposer seriously loses status if the decider rejects their offer.”

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Notes to Editors

1 Robert Sapolsky, Faculty Member for F1000 Biology, is Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences Stanford School of Medicine. http://f1000biology.com/about/biography/1858635299890760

2 The full text of the evaluation of is available free for 90 days at: http://www.f1000biology.com/article/2tj1y0f6mqncc4s/id/2127958

3 The free full text of the original paper by Eisenegger et al. (Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour) is available at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/full/nature08711.html

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