Investigating effects of testosterone on economic preferences

What is it about?

Testosterone has been proposed to influence economic preferences such as risk taking, fairness, altruism, and competitiveness. Most of the evidence comes from correlational studies and small-sample randomized trials. To rigorously test this hypothesis, we conducted a large-scale, pre-registered, double-blind randomized controlled trial with 1,000 male participants. This sample size is substantially larger than previous experiments. Participants in our study were randomly assigned to receive either a placebo or a single dose of intranasal testosterone. They thereafter completed tasks measuring social preferences, competitiveness, and risk taking. We found no evidence that testosterone affected behavior in any of these domains, challenging the view that short-term exogenous testosterone fluctuations meaningfully shape men's economic preferences. However, our study does not address developmental or long-term effects of testosterone exposure.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Economic preferences vary substantially between individuals, and testosterone may potentially play a role in explaining some of this variation. In addition, previous studies had suggested a link between testosterone and several types of economic preferences, thus it is important to understand this potential link through a large-scale randomized trial. Our findings suggest no causal effect of testosterone on economic preferences.