ArticleScientific reports2015
Cortisol and testosterone increase financial risk taking and may destabilize markets.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
- Do stress hormones influence choice? A systematic review of pharmacological interventions on the HPA axis and/or SAM system.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Pooled it
- Investigating the effects of single-dose intranasal testosterone on economic preferences in a large randomized trial of men.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Trial
- Opposing Roles of Testosterone and Cortisol in Prosocial Risk-Taking.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sex-dependent effects of acute stress in adolescence or adulthood on appetitive motivation.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Decision-making under stress: A psychological and neurobiological integrative model.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Enhanced Risky Choice in Male Rats Elicited by the Acute Pharmacological Stressor Yohimbine Involves Prefrontal Dopamine D1 Receptor Activation.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Mortality and morbidity in ageing men: Biology, Lifestyle and Environment.Reviews in endocrine & metabolic disorders · 2022Review
- Adolescents take more risks on days they have high diurnal cortisol or emotional distress.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- A Bayesian Modeling Approach to Examine the Role of Testosterone Administration on the Endowment Effect and Risk-Taking.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Oxytocin moderates the association between testosterone-cortisol ratio and trustworthiness: A randomized placebo-controlled study.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Testosterone and socioeconomic position: Mendelian randomization in 306,248 men and women in UK Biobank.Science advances · 2021Article
- Under cover of the night: context-dependency of anthropogenic disturbance on stress levels of wild roe deerConservation physiology · 2020Article
- Testosterone reduces the threat premium in competitive resource division.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Testing the influence of testosterone administration on men's honesty in a large laboratory experiment.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Exogenous Testosterone Enhances the Reactivity to Social Provocation in Males.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Article
- Testosterone is not associated with traits of optimism or pessimism: Observational evidence from the prospective DETECT study.PloS one · 2018Article
- Testosterone, Cortisol and Financial Risk-Taking.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2018Review
- Viewing sexual images is associated with reduced physiological arousal response to gambling loss.PloS one · 2018Article
- Acute stress alters individual risk taking in a time-dependent manner and leads to anti-social risk.The European journal of neuroscience · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
It is widely known that financial markets can become dangerously unstable, yet it is unclear why. Recent research has highlighted the possibility that endogenous hormones, in particular testosterone and cortisol, may critically influence traders' financial decision making. Here we show that cortisol, a hormone that modulates the response to physical or psychological stress, predicts instability in financial markets. Specifically, we recorded salivary levels of cortisol and testosterone in people participating in an experimental asset market (N = 142) and found that individual and aggregate levels of endogenous cortisol predict subsequent risk-taking and price instability. We then administered either cortisol (single oral dose of 100 mg hydrocortisone, N = 34) or testosterone (three doses of 10 g transdermal 1% testosterone gel over 48 hours, N = 41) to young males before they played an asset trading game. We found that both cortisol and testosterone shifted investment towards riskier assets. Cortisol appears to affect risk preferences directly, whereas testosterone operates by inducing increased optimism about future price changes. Our results suggest that changes in both cortisol and testosterone could play a destabilizing role in financial markets through increased risk taking behaviour, acting via different behavioural pathways.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.