08/03/2025
In other words, testosterone is an anti-bandwagon hormone.
'Rival theories suggest that the hormone might either diminish or strengthen audience-dependent prosociality. We show that exogenous testosterone fully eliminated strategic, i.e., feigned, prosociality and thus decreased submission to audience expectations. ..
Rather, when being watched, the hormone altered the degree to which the learned information on choice value translated to action selection. Taken together, our study provides novel evidence of testosterone’s effects on implicit reward processing, through which it counteracts conformity and deceptive reputation strategies.'
Humans are strategically more prosocial when their actions are being watched by others than when they act alone. Using a psychopharmacogenetic approach, we investigated the endocrinological and computational mechanisms of such audience-driven prosociality. One hundred and ninety-two male participant...
