Hormonal and modality specific effects on males’ emotion recognition ability

Lausen, Adi; Broering, Christina; Penke, Lars; Schacht, Annekathrin

doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104719

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 136 publications

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“…The lack of a significant mediation effect by FTI may be explained by unmeasured factors associated with both AAS use and ERT. Previous studies testing the association between testosterone and social cognition have reported both positive and negative associations (Lausen et al 2020 ; Nadler et al 2019 ; Vongas and Al Hajj 2017 ). This heterogeneity in results is potentially a result of complex interactions between environmental and biological variables.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men

Scarth,

Hauger,

Thorsby

et al. 2023

Psychopharmacology

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Rationale Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are used to improve physical performance and appearance, but have been associated with deficits in social cognitive functioning. Approximately 30% of people who use AAS develop a dependence, increasing the risk for undesired effects. Objectives To assess the relationship between AAS use (current/previous), AAS dependence, and the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions, and investigate the potential mediating role of hormone levels. Methods In total 156 male weightlifters, including those with current (n = 45) or previous (n = 34) AAS use and never-using controls (n = 77), completed a facial Emotion Recognition Task (ERT). Participants were presented with faces expressing one out of six emotions (sadness, happiness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise) and were instructed to indicate which of the six emotions each face displayed. ERT accuracy and response time were recorded and evaluated for association with AAS use status, AAS dependence, and serum reproductive hormone levels. Mediation models were used to evaluate the mediating role of androgens in the relationship between AAS use and ERT performance. Results Compared to never-using controls, men currently using AAS exhibited lower recognition accuracy for facial emotional expressions, particularly anger (Cohen’s d = −0.57, pFDR = 0.03) and disgust (d = −0.51, pFDR = 0.05). Those with AAS dependence (n = 47) demonstrated worse recognition of fear relative to men without dependence (d = 0.58, p = 0.03). Recognition of disgust was negatively correlated with serum free testosterone index (FTI); however, FTI did not significantly mediate the association between AAS use and recognition of disgust. Conclusions Our findings demonstrate impaired facial emotion recognition among men currently using AAS compared to controls. While further studies are needed to investigate potential mechanisms, our analysis did not support a simple mediation effect of serum FTI.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This heterogeneity in results is potentially a result of complex interactions between environmental and biological variables. For example, relationships between testosterone and social cognition and behaviors can be moderated by cortisol or competition (Carré et al 2014 ; Lausen et al 2020 ; Wagels et al 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men

Scarth,

Hauger,

Thorsby

et al. 2023

Psychopharmacology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One possible explanation for lack of replication across development may be related to how sex balance across proband groups distributes the relationship between puberty, hormones, and social cognition. Females are better at emotion recognition tasks than males [ 35 , 36 ] and there is evidence that late-pubescent and post-pubescent individuals are generally better able to recognize emotions than those in early puberty or prepubescents ( e . g ., the PNC young proband group) [ 37 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder associates with anger recognition in a neurodevelopment-focused phenome-wide scan of unaffected youths from a population-based cohort

et al. 2020

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The polygenic nature and the contribution of common genetic variation to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) allude to a high degree of pleiotropy between ASD and other psychiatric and behavioral traits. In a pleiotropic system, a single genetic variant contributes small effects to several phenotypes or disorders. While analyzed broadly, there is a paucity of research studies investigating the shared genetic information between specific neurodevelopmental domains and ASD. We performed a phenome-wide association study of ASD polygenetic risk score (PRS) against 491 neurodevelopmental subdomains ascertained in 4,309 probands from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (PNC) who lack an ASD diagnosis. Our main analysis calculated ASD PRS in 4,309 PNC probands using the per-SNP effects reported in a recent genome-wide association study of ASD in a case-control design. In a high-resolution manner, our main analysis regressed ASD PRS against 491 neurodevelopmental phenotypes with age, sex, and ten principal components of ancestry as covariates. Follow-up analyses included in the regression model PRS derived from brain-related traits genetically correlated with ASD. Our main finding demonstrated that 11-17-year old probands with the highest ASD genetic risk were able to identify angry faces (R 2 = 1.06%, p = 1.38 × 10 −7 , p Bonferroni-corrected = 1.9 × 10 −3). This ability replicated in older probands (>18 years; R 2 = 0.55%, p = 0.036) and persisted after covarying with other psychiatric disorders, brain imaging traits, and educational attainment (R 2 = 0.2%, p = 0.019). We also detected several suggestive associations between ASD PRS and emotionality and connectedness with others. These data (i) indicate how genetic liability to ASD may influence neurodevelopment in the general population, (ii) reinforce epidemiological findings of heightened ability of ASD cases to predict certain social psychological events based on increased systemizing skills, and (iii) recapitulate theories of imbalance between empathizing and systemizing in ASD etiology.

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“…One of the potential limitations in the current study could stem from combining two datasets collected within the scope of two large studies (see Lausen et al, 2020;Rafiee et al, 2023).…”

Section: Limitations and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex differences in emotion recognition: Investigating the moderating effects of stimulus features

Rafiee¹,

Schacht²

2023

Preprint

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The ability to recognize emotions – a crucial prerequisite for social interactions – varies among individuals. Sex differences have been proposed as a central source of individual differences, although the existing evidence is rather heterogeneous. In the current study (N = 426), we investigated potential moderating effects of stimulus features including modality, emotion specificity, and sex of encoder on the magnitude of sex differences in emotion recognition. Our findings replicated women’s overall better emotion recognition, particularly evident for negative expressions (fear and anger) compared to men. This outperformance was observable in all modalities, with the largest differences for audiovisually expressed emotions, while encoders’ sex had no impact. Given our findings, future studies should consider these and other potential moderator variables to better estimate sex differences.

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Hormonal and modality specific effects on males’ emotion recognition ability

Cited by 10 publications

References 136 publications

Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men

Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men

Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder associates with anger recognition in a neurodevelopment-focused phenome-wide scan of unaffected youths from a population-based cohort

Sex differences in emotion recognition: Investigating the moderating effects of stimulus features

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