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The Effects of Exogenous Testosterone on Men’s Moral Decision-Making

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Abstract

Correlational research has linked testosterone (T) to moral reasoning, such that individuals high in T respond to moral dilemmas in a more utilitarian manner (Carney and Mason 2010). In the present study, 30 male undergraduates completed baseline measures of T, psychopathic traits, and digit-ratio (2D:4D) and were subsequently administered 150 mg of testosterone or placebo in a double-blind within-subjects experiment meant to explore a potential causal influence of T on moral decision-making. Following drug administration, participants rated their agreement with a set of incidental and instrumental moral dilemmas, the total of which provided an index of the participant’s utilitarian decision-making on that testing day. Results revealed a significant drug × type of dilemma interaction. Post-hoc analyses revealed that T administration was associated with increased utilitarian behavior within incidental moral dilemmas, but with decreased utilitarian decision-making in instrumental dilemmas, although neither trend was statistically-significant. The interpersonal/affective facet (i.e., Factor 1) of psychopathy was positively correlated with utilitarian responses. No effects were found for baseline testosterone or digit ratio. Potential reasons underlying the effect of T decreasing utilitarianism in incidental dilemmas, as well as future directions for research in this area, are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Half of the instrumental/incidental dilemmas involved situations in which the participant could save themselves and others, and the other half of the dilemmas involved situations in which the participant could save only others. Because this self vs. other factor did not interact with drug condition or with type of dilemma, we collapsed our main analyses across these levels.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Steve Hansen, Benjamin Moreau, and Erika Ruddick for their help with data collection. We also thank Algonquin Pharmasave for help with preparing Androgel® and Placebo gels (in particular, Meghan Heintz, and Jen Zou). Finally, we thank Terri Moreau for performing the blood draws and for medical supervision. This project was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (to JMC) and by a Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) grant (to JMC). NSERC and NOHFC played no further role in data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

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  1. Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada

    Steven Arnocky, Sara M. Taylor, Nathan A. Olmstead & Justin M. Carré

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  1. Steven Arnocky
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  2. Sara M. Taylor
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Correspondence to Justin M. Carré.

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Arnocky, S., Taylor, S.M., A. Olmstead, N. et al. The Effects of Exogenous Testosterone on Men’s Moral Decision-Making. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3, 1–13 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0046-8

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