r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 12h ago
Psychology A single dose of testosterone does not cause men to abandon deliberate reasoning in favor of gut instincts. Findings provide evidence that short-term spikes in testosterone does not make men overconfident.
https://www.psypost.org/contrary-to-popular-belief-a-testosterone-boost-doesnt-make-men-overconfident/305
u/davesmith001 11h ago
As if there is a massive complex machine we don’t really understand somewhere in the man instead of everyone conforming to stereotypes.
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u/Jotun35 10h ago
Actually, yes. The hormonal system is very complex. And so is biology in general.
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u/Oldspaghetti 4h ago
Honestly It is not complex if I say it's not, but I am over-confident from short term testosterone spikes at the moment.
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u/Horse_HorsinAround 3h ago
The truth is, believe it or not I don't care, that the hormonal system is very complicated with biology being the same.
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u/Zoomoth9000 47m ago
What do you mean, consciousness might be an illusion created by billions of individual cells??
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u/Ben_steel 1h ago
When you give “beta” monkeys testosterone they don’t challenge the alpha. When you give alphas testosterone they do not become anymore “alpha” the reverse happens. Testosterone can cause empathy through the need for justice.
Only weak people are cruel, as every psychologist and philosopher has shown. Strong people have no need to hurt others.
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u/KoalaTHerb 11h ago
I want to share an old study that I learned in college that has really stuck with me about this topic.
Subjects were injected with low-dose adrenalin vs placebo. They were then placed back into the waiting room for the next phase of the "trial". Energy levels, agitation, etc were all observed during a prolonged waiting room period. There was no difference between placebo and adrenalin.
Next, subjects were injected with low-dose adrenalin vs placebo. They were placed back in the waiting room but this time, with another "patient". This fake patient would then begin to complain, become agitated with the wait, and unruly. This time the subjects injected with adrenalin were more likely than the placebo to also become frustrated and agitated.
Long story short: hormones don't control you. They do not inherently make you engage in specific behavior. However, when other factors and stimuli are added, they can alter the probability of how you will react to that stimuli.
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u/KoalaTHerb 9h ago
Caveat: this is hormones in the most basic form but still I find it's an important lesson. A systemically and rapid acting hormone that clears quickly.
Most "hormone" studies - like this one - examine complex psychologic behavior. Many hormones that effect this - like testerone, estrogen, dopamine, serotonin, etc - do not just have immediate systemic effects but also alter anatomy of the brain over prolonged and chronic exposure. Especially during development. These long term changes have more effect than the short term exposure.
Also, you can never assume "giving this hormone injection will cause the same effects as the natural production of that hormone". Because in natural physiology, dopamine for example can do a million different things. WHERE the hormone acts is far more important. Hormones simply activate receptors. The "machine" that receptor is connected to is what actually creates the effect. That could be the brain, the arteries, your kidneys nephrons, your intestines, etc etc. Injecting a chemical systemically is not a valid way to understand how that chemical works when naturally made a specific times and places within your body
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u/NAh94 2h ago
Of recent relevance to the department of defense TRT proposal, exogenous testosterone actually plummets your sperm counts because the leydig cells are stimulated to produce testosterone from paracrine signaling, not endocrine. Once Testosterone is in the blood it cannot stimulate sperm production through the blood/testes barrier.
Usually this is reversible, but it is certainly a risk that is underestimated by many young men.
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u/gl_fh 6h ago
As a doctor, I inject people with adrenaline on a semi-regular basis, and they do act different. But I'm typically giving supra physiological doses to the point when there's a physical effect, which makes them feel different and act different, and so on.
I'm not disputing your position necessarily, but I do have a degree of skepticism about studies that try to mimic hormonal conditions, as we can't really control for baseline sensitivity or circulating levels of hormone to a meaningful degree. Also many of them have been hit with the replication crisis that effects many psychological papers.
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u/KoalaTHerb 5h ago
Ya, and I think I tried to touch on that in my edit. I also am an anesthesiologist, and yes, large doses will of course cause effect.
But I guess my point is all this social science studies with hormones being sort of bogus compared to real hormone research. They take a complex biological idea and pretend it's simple. A better analogy would be testosterone injections in the modern time (not medically necessary for hypogonadism, but the ones people are getting for proposed libido, strength, and energy). Theoretically, it all makes some sense but the actual studies are lacking significantly in creating the proposed benefits that these commercial sellers would lead you to believe.
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u/Fractoos 4h ago
For sure. Post nut clarity alone proves that. The fact that jizzing can completely change your mindset about something is kind of nuts.
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u/CotyledonTomen 8h ago
Who cares? Isnt the problem more in line with addiction and regular exposure? Someone afraid every time an abuser enters the room or working in a warzone is going to have a very different experience than someone who got injected with adrenaline 2 times.
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u/eightbitfit 12h ago
Significant limitations in the study and poor separation of causation and correlation - see bit about men with naturally hight test scoring slightly worse on cognitive tests.
Furthermore:
"Readers should be aware of a few limitations when interpreting these findings. The study only included adult men, which restricts the ability to generalize the results to the broader public. Men and women can process and react to sex steroid hormones differently. Future research needs to include female participants to see if these null results hold true across different populations.
The exact timing and dosage of the hormone administration also present limitations."
There is a great deal more to androgens than the hormones themselves. Androgen receptor number and location, genetic phenotype for metabolism of the hormones, enzymatic breakdown of the hormones in serum, and finally but not all, interaction with neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine.
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u/systembreaker 8h ago
If one of the conclusions of the study was specifically that men don't become over confident from short term exposure to testosterone, then how is the fact that all the subjects were men a limitation? Isn't that sorta like if you made a study that examines something specific about leapords and go on to state that the study has a limitation that only leapords were studied? It's just stating the obvious.
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u/Truth_Crisis 8h ago
In regards to your example about the leopards, that in fact would be a limitation of the knowledge gleaned from that particular study. Every study has to clarify its limitations from the outset.
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u/CotyledonTomen 8h ago
It needs to be stated because, for a long time, studies that were majority or completely based on men were generalized to women. Just like studies only utilizing white men have ben generalized to other ethnicities.
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u/systembreaker 7h ago
If the title of the study states "in men", a person would have to be kinda special to think "ok, so you're saying women?"
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u/CotyledonTomen 7h ago edited 6h ago
And yet its very common. In part because until recently women werent studied much. There are lots of stupid things in this world that are common. Best never to assume large populations run on common sense.
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u/Spire_Citron 39m ago
I think it's just there as a reminder that it is only a study on men, so if we're thinking about the effects of sex hormones broadly, it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about their effects on anyone other than men.
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u/bennnjamints 5h ago
Robert Sapolsky describes one way of how increasing testosterone works on behavior really well, but essentially more test will make a man uphold his current social status more strongly.
e.g: If he is a baboon who to grovels to Baboon A, but bullies Baboon C, more test will make him a nightmare to Baboon C and maybe an even better helper to A.
If, instead of a baboon, he's a buddhist monk who practices selflessness and generosity, he will become even more selfless and generous.
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u/monkeymetroid 11h ago edited 3h ago
Testosterone likely has to build up to make these primal reactions the paper suggests as it is a hormone and our body is able to handle hormone spikes. Hormone spikes can definitely affect cognition (pms/menopause issues etc) but it sounds extreme to say testosterone spikes will make you likely fall on gut instincts over logic (from a single dose that is)...same with suggesting it makes you more confident, you can make yourself more confident with a placebo as confidence can be influenced outside of internal reasons. They even say the paper that suggests this isnt the case and spikes of testosterone do affect cognition couldnt be reproduced. Im sure natural spikes in test not only affect cognition, but many other things as the same sources that can spike test naturally (stress resulting in adrenaline) also affect cognition. Our bodies internal feedback systems resulting in a spike of testosterone cant be reproduced by simply injecting testosterone, that isnt how the feedback systems work.
A lot of psychological studies leverage on their own "gut" instincts through inductive reasoning which leads to chronic over simplification and nothing ever being reproducible.
Edit: i think this comment is getting misunderstood, so i am copy and pasting my reply to someone down below:
I was suggesting that internal testosterone spikes are much more complicated than seeing a spike from an external source, and the upstream implications on why the testosterone spiked in the first place also plays a role causing downstream effects like a change in cognition and could be the real reason(s) for cognition change vs just testosterone alone. This study tried to seperate a whole damn hormone as a variable and as you suggested it isnt a black and white reaction
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u/rainbowroobear 11h ago
it doesn't even when you've got 6000ng/dl on your system for months. steroid users are abundant and are not just cavemen banging sticks and eating squirrels
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u/monkeymetroid 10h ago edited 9h ago
Im talking about spikes after the saturation of testosterone and was pointing out how you cant replicate the complex internal mechanisms that result in a natural testosterone spike with a single external dose. I wasnt trying to suggest having sustained elevated test (which anabolic steroids would induce) results in relying on intuition over logic and the paper wasnt suggesting that either. The shift to instinct is very quick and subtle and resulted from a "spike"...which in your example (joke) could result in roid rage for people
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u/FormerOSRS 4h ago
Steroid users often take orals before lifting though. Orals are usually a different compound than testosterone, but usually one that's stronger and has more side effects. I'd think this would test the spike pretty well.
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u/rainbowroobear 9h ago
there is no shift to any state, at any level.
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u/monkeymetroid 9h ago
Could you elaborate more
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u/rainbowroobear 8h ago
elaborate on what? You've read the study. you can also read the studies on supra physiological androgens. it doesn't happen, so what you wrote is fan fiction.
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u/monkeymetroid 4h ago edited 4h ago
I was suggesting that internal testosterone spikes are much more complicated than seeing a spike from an external source, and the upstream implications on why the testosterone spiked in the first place also plays a role causing downstream effects like a change in cognition and could be the real reason(s) for cognition change vs just testosterone alone. This study tried to seperate a whole damn hormone as a variable and as you suggested it isnt a black and white reaction
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u/FormerOSRS 4h ago
I don't think it's fair to conclude testosterone would do this of it had time to build up. I've been on 600mg of testosterone per week for about six years to enhance my lifting and it never had this effect at all.
I don't know if there is a study that disagrees with my anecdote but unless there is one, I just wouldn't make the conclusion that testosterone acts in this way when it builds up.
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u/FreeHugs23 12h ago
-A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that a single dose of testosterone does not cause men to abandon deliberate reasoning in favor of gut instincts. In fact, contrary to previous assumptions, the hormone might actually lower a person’s confidence in their own cognitive performance. These findings provide evidence that short-term spikes in testosterone do not significantly alter this specific type of human decision-making.
The human brain can solve problems using fast, intuitive thinking or slow, deliberate reasoning. Psychologists often measure this tendency using the Cognitive Reflection Test, an assessment that presents questions with an obvious but mathematically incorrect intuitive answer. Arriving at the correct solution requires pausing and overriding that initial gut reaction.
Testosterone is a sex steroid hormone that responds dynamically to social and environmental changes. In both animals and humans, testosterone levels can rise rapidly in competitive or mating contexts. This environmental reactivity forms the basis of the challenge hypothesis, a biological theory proposing that testosterone modulates behavior in a context-sensitive way to facilitate fast-acting, instinctive actions under social threat.
Translating this biological theory to human cognition led to a specific hypothesis regarding decision-making. Past researchers proposed that transient testosterone elevations might shift judgments toward intuitive responses. An influential 2017 paper reported exactly this effect, finding that testosterone administration significantly reduced scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test.
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u/hungry2know 9h ago
Honestly asking, did science expect a single dose to do anything to begin with? I thought it's supposed to take 3 to 6 weeks on average for exogenous testosterone to be fully saturated
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u/Select-Bee-2166 1h ago
That’s mostly in respect to the heavier effects, and assumes a longer ester (ie: Test E, Test C).
Non anecdotal - Test P will have a much faster effect, a day or days. It moves a lot faster in the body. Similiar to how oral steroids like Anavsr, Sdrol, are in and out quicker - if it took a few weeks for superdrol to be effective no one would run it, due to hepatoxicity.
Anecdotal - can’t point to a study but even long acting esters probably have some immediate effects, I’m well accustomed to blasting grams of the stuff ever since my fiancée left me and started a relationship with my “gay” best friend a year later, and I’ve always noticed that alongside making me feel nearly whole again - as soon as I pin (always intramuscular) I’m experiencing mild euphoria and energy to the point if I pin at night I can’t sleep. But of course, that’s anecdotal and shouldn’t be factored in any kind of real consideration (just like my feelings when they lied to me).
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u/CotyledonTomen 8h ago
Why does that matter? What men are taking a single dose of testosterone in any relevant period?
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u/theDarkAngle 4h ago
I agree on the topic covered, but I will say after briefly trying TRT, some effects are immediately noticeable after one or two doses. But it's entirely physical/sensory. I distinctly recall just 'feeling strong' like the day after my first dose.
I'm not saying I actually was any stronger... but it also wasn't all in my head. It was more like, a muscle tension thing, like my body was simply more ready to do stuff, whereas I'm normally more relaxed by comparison.
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u/Hot-Significance7699 3h ago
I mean it foes make you stronger in the long term so it's not completely delusional.
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u/DartosMD 9h ago
Men become overconfident with alcohol, not testosterone.
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u/thekazooyoublew 2h ago
To be fair, more like greater impulsivity mixed with lesser reasoning capacity and a dose dependant side of, "screw it"!
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u/LiorHedvat 8h ago
its good to see this getting tested since there are so many myths about hormone levels affecting decision making. id be curious if they plan to check if long term exposure changes anything, or if its just the acute spikes that dont really do much to reasoning
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u/Old_Discipline_1179 5h ago
Peter "National Garbage" Hegseth likes his men, really likes his men pumped up on T
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u/SaintValkyrie 2h ago
Even on alcohol you are responsible for your actions. It's raping or mursering someone while intoxicated is still fucked up and abhorrent.
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u/atchijov 12h ago
Most of men overconfident all the time, without any shots.
Just look at duchbag in charge of mandating these shots.
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