A real macho man acts without hesitation
Testosterone prevented men's brains from "working on mistakes"
Oleg Lischuk, N+1
American scientists have found that elevated testosterone levels reduce men's ability to critically evaluate impulsive and intuitive judgments. The results of the work (Nave et al., Single dose testosterone administration impairs cognitive reflection in men) have been accepted for publication in the journal Psychological Science.
The male sex hormone testosterone regulates reproductive behavior, such as battles between males and mating, in various animals. In humans, it affects the level of aggression and the risk of disorders associated with poor control of impulsive behavior. At the same time, the specific psychological mechanisms of such an action of the hormone have not been studied enough.
To understand these mechanisms, employees of the California Institute of Technology and colleagues from other research centers invited 243 adult men to participate in a double-blind experiment, which makes the study one of the largest of its kind to date. After filling out a demographic questionnaire and passing tests for testosterone and other hormones, participants were randomly assigned a gel containing testosterone or a placebo.
Five hours later, when the level of the drug in the blood reached a maximum and stabilized, the volunteers were asked to take a test for cognitive reflection – the ability to critically treat intuitive judgments and additionally think about them. This test (in Russian-language sources it is sometimes called the cognitive abilities test), developed in 2005 by the American psychologist Shane Frederick, contains tasks implying a simple intuitive answer, which, upon careful consideration, turns out to be incorrect.
Example of a task
A baseball bat and a ball cost a dollar and 10 cents, and a bat is a dollar more expensive than a ball. How much does the ball cost? The correct answer is five cents, not 10, as it seems at first, but to give it, a person must have sufficient cognitive reflection.
In addition, all participants were asked to complete mathematical tasks to assess their involvement, motivation and basic computing skills.
It turned out that participants who received testosterone made mistakes on average 20 percent more often than members of the control group, while they gave incorrect answers faster, and the correct ones were slower. A similar pattern persisted after the introduction of adjustments for age, mood, mathematical skills and levels of 14 other hormones.
"We found that participants who received testosterone were faster to give rash answers to puzzles in which the initial guess is usually wrong. Testosterone either suppresses the process of mental verification of conclusions, or enhances the intuitive feeling that "I'm definitely right.".. We think he's acting by boosting self-confidence. If you are more self–confident, it will seem to you that you are right, and there will not be enough self-doubt to correct mistakes," explained in a press release Testosterone Makes Men Less Likely to Question Their Impulses, one of the authors of the work Colin Camerer (Colin Camerer).
He added that the results raise the question of the possible negative effects of testosterone replacement therapy, which is gaining popularity, aimed at restoring reduced libido in middle-aged men.
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10.05.2017