Trial reportProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Does testosterone impair men's cognitive empathy? Evidence from two large-scale randomized controlled trials.
Trial report in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Does testosterone impair men's cognitive empathy? Evidence from two large-scale randomized controlled trials.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Trial
- Relative to females, male rats are more willing to forego obtaining sucrose reward in order to prevent harm to their cage mate.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Article
- Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Emotion processing differences mediate the link between sex and autistic traits in young adulthood.JCPP advances · 2022Article
- Evaluation of personality disorders in patients with Gender Identity Disorder (GID): An update.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2022Article
- Testosterone administration does not alter the brain activity supporting cognitive and affective empathy.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- Sex differences in neuronal systems function and behaviour: beyond a single diagnosis in autism spectrum disorders.Translational psychiatry · 2021Review
- Response of salivary biomarkers to an empathy triggering film sequence-a pilot study.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Genetic and morphological estimates of androgen exposure predict social deficits in multiple neurodevelopmental disorder cohorts.Molecular autism · 2021Article
- Pubertal Testosterone and Brain Response to Faces in Young Adulthood: An Interplay between Organizational and Activational Effects in Young Men.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- No evidence for a difference in 2D:4D ratio between youth with elevated prenatal androgen exposure due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia and controls.Hormones and behavior · 2021Article
- Weak and Variable Effects of Exogenous Testosterone on Cognitive Reflection Test Performance in Three Experiments: Commentary on Nave, Nadler, Zava, and Camerer (2017).Psychological science · 2020Article
- Neural responses in the pain matrix when observing pain of others are unaffected by testosterone administration in women.Experimental brain research · 2020Article
- Low Salivary Testosterone Level Is Associated With Efficient Attention Holding by Self Face in Women.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The capacity to infer others' mental states (known as 'mind reading' and 'cognitive empathy') is essential for social interactions across species, and its impairment characterizes psychopathological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Previous studies reported that testosterone administration impaired cognitive empathy in healthy humans, and that a putative biomarker of prenatal testosterone exposure (finger digit ratios) moderated the effect. However, empirical support for the relationship has relied on small sample studies with mixed evidence. We investigate the reliability and generalizability of the relationship in two large-scale double-blind placebo-controlled experiments in young men (n = 243 and n = 400), using two different testosterone administration protocols. We find no evidence that cognitive empathy is impaired by testosterone administration or associated with digit ratios. With an unprecedented combined sample size, these results counter current theories and previous high-profile reports, and demonstrate that previous investigations of this topic have been statistically underpowered.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.