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Updated: May 25, 2026

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making
Published on: March 2, 2011
Differential modulation of impulsive behavior by loneliness and testosterone in adolescent females
Takashi X Fujisawa1, Shota Nishitani, Satoshi Ishii
1Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University, Japan.
Objective:
Adolescence is characterized by increases in loneliness, impulsiveness and circulating testosterone levels. We investigated the relationship between these characteristics in adolescent females.
Methods:
For this purpose, we measured impulsivity and loneliness by means of a Go/No-go task and the UCLA loneliness scale, respectively. Testosterone levels in saliva were measured by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA).
Results:
The results showed that testosterone and loneliness have a positive relevance to impulsivity in adolescent females, whereas there was no relationship between loneliness and testosterone levels.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that testosterone and loneliness modulate impulsivity via distinctive pathways.
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