SCIENCE in your LIFE
Mean, Nice, or Both?
By S.S.
Testosterone is a hormone that is associated with male behaviors. It commonly is to blame for making men aggressive and withdrawn. However, this may not be the only thing that testosterone can do to men. According to a recent study, testosterone can also be responsible for making men kind and generous.
We know that testosterone is responsible for aggressive behavior, but can it cause the opposite behavior as well? It has been theorized that testosterone’s purpose is to increase social status. The idea is that testosterone selectively increases behavior relative to a situation. So, when provoked, it can increase aggression and can increase generosity when needed.
In a recent study, scientists test this hypothesis by injecting young males with testosterone supplement or a placebo in a double-blind study. This simply means that neither the participants or scientists know who gets the placebo and who does not. The participants then played a game called the Ultimate Game and was given the opportunity to punish or reward a proposer at a cost to themselves. The scientists found that the participants who were given the testosterone were more likely to punish the proposer when given unfair offers. This proves that testosterone does in fact increase aggression after being provoked. On the other side, when the participants that were administered the testosterone were given large offers by the proposers, they were more likely to reward the proposer. The increased generosity in absence provocation shows that testosterone in certain situations can increase good behavior in order to increase status.
The results of this study show that testosterone is not just associated with aggression. This study provided evidence of a much greater role for testosterone in affecting male behavior in status related situations.
Dreher, J.C. et al. (2016) Testosterone causes both prosocial and antisocial status-enhancing behaviors in human males. PNAS. 113, 11633–11638, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1608085113
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/41/11633.abstract
Please send any questions or comments to Dr. Spitzer (spitzern@marshall.edu )
Note: Any opinions expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of Dr. Spitzer, the Department of Biological Sciences, or Marshall University.