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Updated: May 25, 2026
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Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making
Published on: March 2, 2011
Testosterone disrupts human collaboration by increasing egocentric choices
Nicholas D Wright1, Bahador Bahrami, Emily Johnson
1Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. n.wright@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|February 3, 2012
Summary
Testosterone disrupts collaborative decision-making in perceptual tasks by increasing egocentric choices. This hormone reduces the benefits of group judgment, highlighting biological regulation of social behavior.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Collaboration enhances group decision-making in perceptual tasks.
- Oxytocin promotes collaboration, but opponent agents influencing social behavior are unknown.
- Understanding factors that modulate collaboration is crucial for balancing social and individual dispositions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if testosterone, an androgen hormone, acts as an opponent agent to oxytocin in modulating collaborative decision-making.
- To determine testosterone's effect on information aggregation in perceptual tasks without an economic component.
Main Methods:
- A perceptual decision task was used to assess collaborative decision-making.
- Participants' judgments were compared during individual and joint decision-making conditions.
- The causal effect of testosterone on collaborative performance was examined.
Main Results:
- Testosterone causally disrupted collaborative decision-making, reducing performance benefits from collaboration.
- Individual decision-making ability remained unaffected by testosterone.
- Testosterone led to more egocentric choices, with an overweighting of personal judgments over others' during joint decisions.
Conclusions:
- Testosterone diminishes the propensity to collaborate in perceptual decision-making tasks.
- Social behavior is dynamically regulated by neurohumoral agents that can either promote or diminish collaboration.
- Findings reveal a biological mechanism that reduces collaborative tendencies, impacting social decision-making.
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