More testosterone makes men more honest

The more testosterone there is circulating in a man's body, the more honest he's likely to be. Even when he knows that no one is likely to find out that he is lying, he's more likely to tell the truth than a man with less testosterone in his body. Researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany write about this in PLoS One.

Testosterone & psychology



In 1997 the same psychologists published a study on the relationship between behaviour and the testosterone level of female prisoners. [Psychosom Med. 1997 Sep-Oct;59(5):477-80.] While women with relatively high levels of testosterone in their blood were often more violent, the prison guards surprisingly often described women with low testosterone levels as being 'sly' and 'unreliable'.

Study

The Germans decided to study this aspect of testosterone in more depth. Testosterone is linked to pride and status seeking, they reasoned. Proud people lie less often. So subjects should become more honest if you give them testosterone – for example by rubbing the contents of a sachet of Testogel into their skin, which would supply them with 50 mg testosterone.

The researchers administered the testosterone to just under 50 male subjects. Twenty hours later they got the subjects to throw a dice and record their scores on a computer. The higher their score, the more money they earned.

A similar-sized control group were given a placebo, and had to go through the dice routine too.

The men that had been given testosterone had an average level of 7.78 nanograms per millilitre during the experiment. The level in the placebo-group men was 6.79 nanograms per millilitre.









The men in the testosterone group won 3.33 euros per throw, the men in the placebo group won 4.18 euros per throw.

















Results



Conclusion

"Our main finding is a lower incidence of self-serving lies in the testosterone group", the Germans write. "We observe this result in a setup where subjects cannot be caught lying. To the best of our knowledge this is the first piece of evidence on a causal relationship between testosterone administration and prosocial behavior when actions are not observable to others."

Source:

PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e46774.

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Can the testosterone supplement N1-T cause a psychosis? 06.09.2012

Four percent of bodybuilders go off the rails on 600 mg testosterone cypionate a week 10.09.2009

Testosterone reduces pain sensitivity 28.07.2009





