Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Testosterone causes both prosocial and antisocial status-enhancing behaviors in human males.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 171 citations in OpenAlex.
- Anabolic-androgenic steroid administration increases self-reported aggression in healthy males: a systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies.Psychopharmacology · 2021Pooled 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
- Effects of testosterone enanthate on aggression, risk-taking, competition, mood, and other cognitive domains during 28 days of severe energy deprivation.Psychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Effect of exogenous testosterone on cooperation depends on personality and time pressure.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Opposing Roles of Testosterone and Cortisol in Prosocial Risk-Taking.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Understanding the Secular Decline in Testosterone: Mechanisms, Consequences, and Clinical Perspectives.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Estradiol, via estrogen receptor β signaling, mediates stress-susceptibility in the male brain.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Gut microbiota alterations in golden snub-nosed monkeys during food shortage and parturition-nursing periods.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- No evidence for an association of testosterone and cortisol hair concentrations with social decision-making in a large cohort of young adults.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Article
- Intranasal oxytocin interacts with testosterone reactivity to modulate parochial altruism.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Current oral contraceptive use affects explicit and implicit measures of depression in women.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Testosterone promotes dominance behaviors in the Ultimatum Game after players' status increases.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Breaking Through the Bottleneck: Krogh's Principle in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and the Potential of Gene Editing.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- Article
- Articulatory effects on perceptions of men's status and attractiveness.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- A Combined Administration of Testosterone and Arginine Vasopressin Affects Aggressive Behavior in Males.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Low competitive status elicits aggression in healthy young men: behavioural and neural evidence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although popular discussion of testosterone's influence on males often centers on aggression and antisocial behavior, contemporary theorists have proposed that it instead enhances behaviors involved in obtaining and maintaining a high social status. Two central distinguishing but untested predictions of this theory are that testosterone selectively increases status-relevant aggressive behaviors, such as responses to provocation, but that it also promotes nonaggressive behaviors, such as generosity toward others, when they are appropriate for increasing status. Here, we tested these hypotheses in healthy young males by injecting testosterone enanthate or a placebo in a double-blind, between-subjects, randomized design (n = 40). Participants played a version of the Ultimatum Game that was modified so that, having accepted or rejected an offer from the proposer, participants then had the opportunity to punish or reward the proposer at a proportionate cost to themselves. We found that participants treated with testosterone were more likely to punish the proposer and that higher testosterone levels were specifically associated with increased punishment of proposers who made unfair offers, indicating that testosterone indeed potentiates aggressive responses to provocation. Furthermore, when participants administered testosterone received large offers, they were more likely to reward the proposer and also chose rewards of greater magnitude. This increased generosity in the absence of provocation indicates that testosterone can also cause prosocial behaviors that are appropriate for increasing status. These findings are inconsistent with a simple relationship between testosterone and aggression and provide causal evidence for a more complex role for testosterone in driving status-enhancing behaviors in males.
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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.