Endogenous testosterone is associated with increased striatal response to audience effects during prosocial choices

Abstract

The role of testosterone on cognitive functions in humans remains controversial. One recent hypothesis suggests that this steroid hormone advances social status. As being observed by others is known to modulate a range of behaviors because of image concerns, we hypothesized that such an audience effect might be an important component of status seeking that is under the control of testosterone. Thus, we investigated to which extent testosterone levels are associated with the effect of being observed during prosocial choices and the neural mechanisms underlying this effect. We enrolled twenty-four male participants, aged 22.47±2.62 years, in an fMRI experiment to examine the relationship between testosterone levels and brain activity engaged in deciding whether to accept or reject monetary transfers to two types of organizations (a positively evaluated organization and a negatively evaluated organization) in presence or absence of an audience. When comparing the public to the private condition, the rate of acceptance increased for the positively evaluated organization, while the rate of rejection increased for the negatively evaluated one. Higher testosterone levels were linked to greater activation in the striatum in the public compared to the private condition, regardless of the organization type. These results indicate a relationship between testosterone levels and striatal activity induced by the audience effect. These findings provide new insights on the role of testosterone in human social behavior.

Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males

“…Humans behave more prosocially when their actions are watched by others [ 1 ]. This phenomenon has been demonstrated across a variety of social behaviors, such as blood donations [ 2 ], church offerings [ 3 ], or monetary donations to charitable organizations [ 4 ], and is often referred to as strategic prosociality [ 5 ], or the audience effect [ 6 ]. From an evolutionary perspective, making one’s generosity visible to others has an important signaling value, in that it advertises an individual’s qualities as a potential partner or a valuable group member [ 7 ].…”

Neurocomputational mechanisms engaged in moral choices and moral learning

“…Elucidating the modulating roles of hormones (eg. oxytocin or testosterone) on the neural computations engaged in moral choices may also help to characterize vulnerability to neuropsychiatric diseases (Crockett et al, 2017;Obeso et al, 2018;Li et al, 2020).…”

Arousal/Stress Effects of “Overwatch” eSports Game Competition in Collegiate Gamers

“…However, the finding that high-skilled players may upregulate testosterone concentrations before game play resulting in no changes with the game play itself may explain the lack of pre to post game significant effects. Owing to the game context of audience presence, it may be that the lower skilled players were more affected, as observed audience effects have been shown to affect testosterone's responses (14). Thus, acute short-term eSport Overwatch game play may in fact lead to greater arousal levels of testosterone in more highly skilled gamers before game play but with game play increases are stimulated in less skilled players.…”

“…However, the finding that highskilled players may upregulate testosterone concentrations before game play resulting in no changes with the game play itself may explain the lack of pre to post game significant effects. Owing to the game context of audience presence, it may be that the lower skilled players were more affected, as observed audience effects have been shown to affect testosterone's responses (14). Thus, 1.…”