PARIS, Feb 4 — Testosterone can skew one’s judgment, creating the impression that decisions are best taken alone even in situations that call for collaboration, according to a study released on Wednesday.

In a clever set of experiments, scientists led by Nicholas Wright at the University of London showed that women given a dose of testosterone become less inclined to act in concert even when it was clearly in their interest to do so.

Researchers set out to discover whether the alpha male hormone par excellence — also present at much lower levels in females — also makes individuals shun co-operation and become more egocentric. — Picture courtesy of Monkey Business Images/shutterstock.com

Finding the right balance between working together and going solo — and knowing when to do one or the other — is an essential life skill.

In some circumstances, joining forces with others is the best way to achieve a desired result: that’s why lions and hyenas hunt in packs, and why humans co-operate on the playing field, in the laboratory, or in battle.

Sometimes, however, decisive individual action is needed to break free of group-think, or to come out ahead of the game.

To a significant extent, our ability to navigate between these two extremes is acquired through learning and experience, but some of these impulses are hardwired too.

Earlier research, for example, on the biological underpinnings of group decision making revealed that a naturally-occurring hormone, oxytocin, promotes the urge to work side-by-side.

At the same time, it was well established that testosterone boosted risk-taking, anti-social behaviour and the kind of aggressiveness that fuels contact sports and trading floors on Wall Street.

But whether the alpha male hormone par excellence — also present at much lower levels in females — also makes individuals shun co-operation and become more egocentric was not known.

To find out, Wright and his colleagues carried out a series of tests over two days, spaced a week apart, with 17 pairs of women volunteers who did not know each other.

On one of the two days, both volunteers in each pair were given a testosterone supplement, while on the other day they ingested a look-alike placebo.

The researchers chose females because in men an additional dose has the effect of suppressing production of the hormone by the body.

During the experiment, both women in each pairing sat in the same room but in front of separate computer screens.

The women were shown the same two images, and asked to pick the one in which a hard-to-discern high-contrast pattern appeared. If their individual choices agreed, the exercise ended there.

But if they diverged, the women were told to consult with each other and reach a joint decision.

Pairs of women who had taken the dummy pill were significantly more successful in coming up with the right answer than those pairs who had been given the hormone, the researchers found.

“The higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically and deciding in favour of their own selection over their partner’s,” even when that choice was wrong, Wright said in a statement.

“Too much testosterone can help blind us to other people’s views,” he concluded. “This can be very significant when we are talking about a dominant individual trying to assert his or her opinion in, say, a jury.”

The broader conclusion, he added, is that hormonal levels can disrupt our attempts to work together. — AFP-Relaxnews

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With testosterone, it’s ‘my way or the highway’, says study

London, Feb 3 (IANS) Testosterone drives egocentricism at the cost of cooperating with others, consequently affecting group decisions, a study reveals.

Collective problem solving can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able to share our information and experiences, said a new study from Wellcome Trust's Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London.

Now researchers have shown that the testosterone has the opposite effect — it makes people act less cooperative and more egocentric, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B reported.

Researcher Nick Wright and colleagues at the Centre for Neuroimaging carried out a series of tests using 17 pairs of female volunteers who had previously never met. The test took place over two days, spaced a week apart, a university statement said.

“When we are making decisions in groups, we tread a fine line between cooperation and self-interest: too much cooperation and we may never get our way, but if we are too self-orientated, we are likely to ignore people who have real insight,” explained Wright.

On one of the days, both volunteers in each pair were given a testosterone supplement; on the other day, they were given a placebo.

Researchers found that as expected, cooperation enabled the group to perform much better than the individuals alone when individuals had received only the placebo. But, when given a testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was markedly reduced.

In fact, higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically and deciding in favour of their own selection over their partner's.

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Testosterone drives ego, trips cooperation

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With testosterone, it's 'my way or the highway': UK study

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2012) — Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) has found. The findings may have implications for how group decisions are affected by dominant individuals.

Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able to share our information and expertise. However, there is a tension between cooperation and self-orientated behaviour: although groups might benefit from a collective intelligence, collaborating too closely can lead to an uncritical groupthink, ending in decisions that are bad for all.

Attempts to understand the biological mechanisms behind group decision making have tended to focus on the factors that promote cooperation, and research has shown that people given a boost of the hormone oxytocin tend to be cooperative. Now, in a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers have shown that the hormone testosterone has the opposite effect — it makes people act less cooperatively and more egocentrically.

Dr Nick Wright and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL carried out a series of tests using 17 pairs of female volunteers* who had previously never met. The test took place over two days, spaced a week apart. On one of the days, both volunteers in each pair were given a testosterone supplement; on the other day, they were given a placebo.

During the experiment, both women sat in the same room and viewed their own screen. Both individuals saw exactly the same thing. First, in each trial they were shown two images, one of which contained a high-contrast target — and their job was to decide individually which image contained the target.

If their individual choices agreed, they received feedback and moved on to the next trial. However, if they disagreed, they were asked to collaborate and discuss with their partner to reach a joint decision. One of the pair then input this joint decision.

The researchers found that, as expected, cooperation enabled the group to perform much better than the individuals alone when individuals had received only the placebo. But, when given a testosterone supplement, the benefit of cooperation was markedly reduced. In fact, higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically and deciding in favour of their own selection over their partner's.

“When we are making decisions in groups, we tread a fine line between cooperation and self-interest: too much cooperation and we may never get our way, but if we are too self-orientated, we are likely to ignore people who have real insight,” explains Dr Wright.

“Our behaviour seems to be moderated by our hormones — we already know that oxytocin can make us more cooperative, but if this were the only hormone acting on our decision-making in groups, this would make our decisions very skewed. We have shown that, in fact, testosterone also affects our decisions, by making us more egotistical.

“Most of the time, this allows us to seek the best solution to a problem, but sometimes, too much testosterone can help blind us to other people's views. This can be very significant when we are talking about a dominant individual trying to assert his or her opinion in, say, a jury.”

Testosterone is implicated in a variety of social behaviours. For example, in chimpanzees, levels of testosterone rise ahead of a confrontation or a fight. In female prisoners, studies have found that higher levels of testosterone correlate with increased antisocial behaviour and higher aggression. Researchers believe that such findings reflect a more general role for testosterone in increasing the motivation to dominate others and increase egocentricity.

Commenting on the findings, Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Trust, said: “Cooperating with others has obvious advantages for sharing skills and experience, but we know it doesn't always work, particularly if one alpha male or alpha female dominates the decision making. This result helps us understand at a hormonal level the factors that can disrupt our attempts to work together.”

The Wellcome Trust funded this study.

*Testosterone is naturally secreted in men and women, and testosterone levels are correlated with important behaviours (e.g. antisocial behaviour) in both men and women. For the size of dose given experimentally, in women this markedly increases their testosterone from its low baseline level. In men, however, the situation is more complicated: men already have high baseline levels of testosterone, so giving such doses will decrease their own production of testosterone, a feedback effect that will act to offset the increase caused by the treatment itself. The researchers therefore used female subjects because giving standard experimental doses causes a straightforward and well-characterised increase in their testosterone levels.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wellcome Trust.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Wright ND et al. Testosterone disrupts human collaboration by increasing egocentric choices. Proc Roy Soc B, 2012

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Testosterone makes us less cooperative and more egocentric

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Testosterone makes us less cooperative and more egocentric, study finds

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Testosterone-fuelled – and stubborn

When working as a group, women who have high testosterone in their systems reach decisions that are more selfish, new research suggests.

While working in a group — such as a trial jury — can be tough, it usually means reaching a better decision than any individual would make. The researchers found, however, that groups of women given testosterone were less productive than those who weren't hormoned up.

“In the placebo trial, there was a big benefit to making your decision in the group; the group made better decision than the individuals. When given testosterone, that was markedly reduced,” study researcher Nicholas Wright, of the University College London in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience.

Group versus self

This self-interest isn't all bad, because groups can be as problematic as they are helpful. “Groupthink” happens when individuals in a group lose the ability to think independently. In group environments, individuals are also more likely to be used or ignored by others. In these cases, individuals who are more self-focused avoid negative group effects.

“You have these groups that are highly cohesive and don't tolerate individuals deviating from the group's ideas. Maybe in those cases the ability to stick with your own opinions might be important,” Wright said.

In groups, humans “face a tension between cooperating and acting more self-interested,” Wright noted.

In instances such as a jury considering a verdict, collaborating results in a better decision. “If too many individuals are trying to be the dominant individual, they may miss out on the benefits of collaboration and miss out on important insights from other group members,” Wright said.

Testing testosterone

In the study, 17 pairs of women, average age 21, were tested twice: once after being given a placebo and once several hours after taking 80 milligrams of testosterone. The hormone levels used in the study were above those normally found in females, but about the right testosterone level for a man. The researchers said they used women because giving testosterone to healthy men would mess up their natural hormone balance, muddying the results of the experiment.

After receiving the testosterone, each pair of women played a computer game in which they had to decide whether one image was brighter or darker than another. If the pair disagreed, they had to talk it out, and one had to input a decision into the computer for the both of them.

When the researchers analyzed the differences in how the women performed on the two days, they found a definite advantage in the group decision-making process in the absence of extra testosterone. (What they didn't find was a difference in each individual's own ability to get the right answer; they did just as well when they were on their own whether they had the hormone in their blood or not.)

Decisions, decisions

When testosterone was given, the hormone disrupted the two women's ability to work together and come to a mutual decision, Wright said. Often one woman stood by her answer and entered it into the computer, the researchers said. This was “egocentric” behavior, focused on the self.

“Egocentricity bias is the degree to which people over-weight their own opinion. If you are more egocentric, you are more likely to think you are right,” Wright said. “These women were more likely to say they were right when they were on testosterone than when they were on placebo.”

Other effects of higher testosterone levels in females have been found (even within the normal hormone range), including antisocial behavior in female prisoners, aggressiveness, and decreased ability to trust.

Dana Carney, a researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, who wasn't involved in the study, said the paper was interesting and important. It “makes a lot of sense given what we know about the manner in which testosterone impacts brain and cognitive functioning,” she said.

The study will be published tomorrow (Feb. 1) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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Testosterone Makes Women More Opinionated in Groups

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Too Much Testosterone Linked to Inflated Ego: Study

Testosterone can skew one's judgement, creating the impression that decisions are best taken alone even in situations that call for collaboration, according to a study released Wednesday.

In a clever set of experiments, scientists led by Nicholas Wright at the University of London showed that women given a dose of testosterone become less inclined to act in concert even when it was clearly in their interest to do so.

Finding the right balance between working together and going solo — and knowing when to do one or the other — is an essential life skill.

In some circumstances, joining forces with others is the best way to achieve a desired result: that's why lions and hyenas hunt in packs, and why humans cooperate on the playing field, in the laboratory, or in battle.

Sometimes, however, decisive individual action is needed to break free of group-think, or to come out ahead of the game.

To a significant extent, our ability to navigate between these two extremes is acquired through learning and experience, but some of these impulses are hardwired too.

Earlier research, for example, on the biological underpinnings of group decision making revealed that a naturally-occurring hormone, oxytocin, promotes the urge to work side-by-side.

At the same time, it was well established that testosterone boosted risk-taking, anti-social behaviour and the kind of aggressiveness that fuels contact sports and trading floors on Wall Street.

But whether the alpha male hormone par excellence — also present at much lower levels in females — also makes individuals shun cooperation and become more egocentric was not known.

To find out, Wright and his colleagues carried out a series of tests over two days, spaced a week apart, with 17 pairs of women volunteers who did not know each other.

On one of the two days, both volunteers in each pair were given a testosterone supplement, while on the other day they ingested a look-alike placebo.

The researchers chose females because in men an additional dose has the effect of suppressing production of the hormone by the body.

During the experiment, both women in each pairing sat in the same room but in front of separate computer screens.

The women were shown the same two images, and asked to pick the one in which a hard-to-discern high-contrast pattern appeared. If their individual choices agreed, the exercise ended there.

But if they diverged, the women were told to consult with each other and reach a joint decision.

Pairs of women who had taken the dummy pill were significantly more successful in coming up with the right answer than those pairs who had been given the hormone, the researchers found.

“The higher levels of testosterone were associated with individuals behaving egocentrically and deciding in favour of their own selection over their partner's,” even when that choice was wrong, Wright said in a statement.

“Too much testosterone can help blind us to other people's views,” he concluded. “This can be very significant when we are talking about a dominant individual trying to assert his or her opinion in, say, a jury.”

The broader conclusion, he added, is that hormonal levels can disrupt our attempts to work together.

See original here:
With testosterone, it's 'my way or the highway': study

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BioSante Pharmaceuticals Provides Corporate Update

By Dr Ananya Mandal, MD

New research has explained why boys tend to talk later than
girls and acquire language skills at a slower rate than girls
do.

For the new study researchers collected umbilical cord blood
from 767 Australian newborns and tested for testosterone.
Newborn boys are exposed to 10 times the levels of
testosterone before birth, compared to girls. Sex hormones, like
testosterone, are known to play a key role in shaping how the
brain develops.
Then, the researchers evaluated the children’s language
skills when they were 1, 2 and 3 years of age.

“Language delay happens in about 12% of children, the
majority of these being boys. For years, the possible causes
have been a mystery,” says researcher Andrew J. O.
Whitehouse, associate professor at the Telethon Institute for
Child Health Research at the University of Western Australia
in Perth. “What we found was that exposure to increased
levels of testosterone, particularly in males, may be one of
the reasons for language delay,” Whitehouse tells
WebMD. “Really it is the first sort of biological
finding, sort of a biological risk factor, for language
delay.”

Researchers note that as they followed the children during
the first three years of life – 3-year-old boys with the
highest umbilical testosterone levels were more than twice as
likely to screen positive for a language delay, compared to
boys with the lowest testosterone
levels. The opposite was true for girls. In girls, higher
testosterone was linked to a lower risk of language delay.
This has baffled the researchers. They say more studies are
needed to answer that question.

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Reason for language development delay in boys – Testosterone: Study

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High testosterone retards language skills in boys