Higher testosterone levels could make men more honest, . A group of German researchers gave one group of men a testosterone patch and another a placebo, then had both groups play a dice game for money, with all players self-reporting their results. The experimenters found that the reported results for the placebo group were more skewed toward higher wins than the group that received testosterone. “This result clearly contradicts the one-dimensional approach that testosterone results in anti-social behavior,” said Armin Falk, a professor at the University of Bonn and one of the study’s authors. While the team says the mechanism through which testosterone affects honesty isn’t clear, they list three hypotheses: testosterone direction influences “prosocial” behavior, increases concern for social status, or acts on player’s beliefs about others’ behavior.
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