Men with increased testosterone are more 'impulsive'

Testosterone is a hormone with a reputation for being associated with masculinity. However, according to new findings, testosterone and impulsiveness go hand in hand.

Two scientists, Gideon Nave (University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Amos Nadler (Western University, Canada) tested the effects of this hormone on the calculation ability of volunteers participating in the experiment, and published in the scientific journal Psychological Science that: testosterone caused men to give... wrong results.

Researchers brought 243 male college students into their lab. Volunteers were asked to remove their shirts and apply a gel to their chest and shoulders.

All the gels given to the volunteers looked and smelled the same. But 125 of them received a gel containing testosterone, while the remaining 118 received a gel without the hormone. The participants were not told about the difference.

After four hours, at which point the testosterone gel users had absorbed the highest levels into their bloodstreams and were thought to influence their decision-making, each student was asked a series of questions that offered a small cash reward for each correct answer. Three of the questions were designed to be “tricky” so that they could lead to incorrect answers. The others simply required precise numerical calculation skills.

The results showed that volunteers who used the testosterone gel performed about 20% worse on tricky questions than those who used the gel without testosterone. While for questions that only required numerical skills, the two groups got the same correct answers.

According to researchers, that is quite a gap in terms of academics.

The difference may be largely due to the fact that testosterone appears to inhibit activity in the brain's prefrontal lobe, according to a previous study in this study.

“The prefrontal cortex is the executive part of the brain,” explains Dr. Nadler. “Instead of being able to make decisions at your best, testosterone may actually reduce your ability to do so.”

Hasty answers to maths questions have been shown to be hallmarks of impulsivity, scientists say.

At first glance, what scientists’ experiments show can make women feel elated in front of men. However, men can also rely on that to explain their impulsiveness by blaming… testosterone.

“Testosterone can take control of the mind,” said Professor Gideon Nave, a marketing lecturer at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), an expert participating in this study.

It could also be a warning to those who believe the “Want to be better in bed?” ads or extol the benefits of testosterone in bodybuilding.

There have been numerous legal claims against testosterone supplements claiming that when used in excess in men - who already have much more of the hormone than women - it can damage the cardiovascular system and cause a host of other side effects.

While Nave and Nadler have pointed out some negative aspects of testosterone, they also argue that while some situations require cognitive calculation, in other cases testosterone is useful, such as when instant “fight or flight” decisions are needed.

“The stimulation of instinctual responses by testosterone may provide the flexibility needed in situations where success depends on instinct, such as during intercourse,” the study found.

“There is no clear right or wrong,” Dr. Nave acknowledged, “but the experiments we conducted showed that, in the case of mathematics, there is a clear right or wrong.”

According to TTO