Testosterone does not induce aggression
Popular scientific literature, art and media wrote the well-known sexual hormone for decades a role which stands for aggressiveness. Research appeared to confirm - led the castration of male rodents to a reduction in combativeness among the animals. thus grew over decades The preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, risky and egocentric behavior. The inference from these experiments with animals, testosterone effects in humans equal, has now proven to be false, as a joint study by neuroscientist Christoph Eisenegger and economists Ernst Fehr, both of the University of Zurich, and Michael Naef, Royal Holloway, London, shows. "We wanted to verify how the hormone affects social behavior affects" explains Dr. Christoph Eisenegger and adds: "We were interested in the question: What is truth and what is myth"
For the study, which was published in the renowned specialist journal "Nature", around 120 test subjects took part in a negotiation experiment in which the division of a real amount of money was negotiated. The rules made it possible to make both fair and unfair offers. The negotiating partner could then accept or reject the offer. The fairer the offer, the less likely it was that the negotiating partner would refuse. If no agreement was reached, then both parties earned nothing.
Before the game, the test subjects were given either a dose of 0.5 mg testosterone or a corresponding sham preparation. "If one were to follow popular opinion, it would be expected that the test subjects would choose an aggressive, self-centered and risky strategy with testosterone - regardless of the possible negative effects on the negotiation process," explains Eisenegger.
Fairer with testosterone
However, the result of the study teaches the opposite. Test subjects with artificially elevated testosterone levels consistently made better, fairer offers than those who received sham drugs. This reduced the risk of your offer being rejected to a minimum. "This adequately refutes the prejudice that testosterone only contributes to aggressive or egoistic behavior in humans," summarizes Eisenegger. Instead, the results suggest that the hormone increases sensitivity for status. In animal species with relatively simple social systems, increased status awareness may be expressed in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, it is not aggression but pro-social behavior that secures status", supposes study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "It is probably not testosterone itself that promotes fairness or makes it aggressive, but the interplay between the hormone and the socially differentiated environment."
In addition, the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone makes you aggressive apparently runs deep: Those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone preparation and not the dummy preparation attracted attention because of extremely unfair offers. It is possible that folk wisdom was used by these people as a legitimation to behave unfairly. The economist Michael Naef says: "It seems that testosterone itself does not induce aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society in which more and more properties and behaviors are traced back to biological causes and in some cases legitimized with them make this prick up. " The study clearly shows the influence of social and biological factors on human behavior.
Original Post:
Christoph Eisenegger, Michael Naef, Romana Snozzi, Markus Heinrichs, Ernst Fehr: Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behavior, Nature, doi: 10.1038 / nature08711
Source: Zurich [University]
