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

Humans are strategically more prosocial when their actions are being watched by others than when they act alone. Using a psychopharmacogenetic approach, we investigated the endocrinological and computational mechanisms of such audience-driven prosociality. One hundred and ninety-two male participant...

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Autores principales: Kutlikova, Hana H., Zhang, Lei, Eisenegger, Christoph, van Honk, Jack, Lamm, Claus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37012404
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01570-y
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author Kutlikova, Hana H.
Zhang, Lei
Eisenegger, Christoph
van Honk, Jack
Lamm, Claus
author_facet Kutlikova, Hana H.
Zhang, Lei
Eisenegger, Christoph
van Honk, Jack
Lamm, Claus
author_sort Kutlikova, Hana H.
collection PubMed
description Humans are strategically more prosocial when their actions are being watched by others than when they act alone. Using a psychopharmacogenetic approach, we investigated the endocrinological and computational mechanisms of such audience-driven prosociality. One hundred and ninety-two male participants received either a single dose of testosterone (150 mg) or a placebo and performed a prosocial and self-benefitting reinforcement learning task. Crucially, the task was performed either in private or when being watched. Rival theories suggest that the hormone might either diminish or strengthen audience-dependent prosociality. We show that exogenous testosterone fully eliminated strategic, i.e., feigned, prosociality and thus decreased submission to audience expectations. We next performed reinforcement-learning drift-diffusion computational modeling to elucidate which latent aspects of decision-making testosterone acted on. The modeling revealed that testosterone compared to placebo did not deteriorate reinforcement learning per se. Rather, when being watched, the hormone altered the degree to which the learned information on choice value translated to action selection. Taken together, our study provides novel evidence of testosterone’s effects on implicit reward processing, through which it counteracts conformity and deceptive reputation strategies.
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spelling pubmed-104253622023-08-16 Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males Kutlikova, Hana H. Zhang, Lei Eisenegger, Christoph van Honk, Jack Lamm, Claus Neuropsychopharmacology Article Humans are strategically more prosocial when their actions are being watched by others than when they act alone. Using a psychopharmacogenetic approach, we investigated the endocrinological and computational mechanisms of such audience-driven prosociality. One hundred and ninety-two male participants received either a single dose of testosterone (150 mg) or a placebo and performed a prosocial and self-benefitting reinforcement learning task. Crucially, the task was performed either in private or when being watched. Rival theories suggest that the hormone might either diminish or strengthen audience-dependent prosociality. We show that exogenous testosterone fully eliminated strategic, i.e., feigned, prosociality and thus decreased submission to audience expectations. We next performed reinforcement-learning drift-diffusion computational modeling to elucidate which latent aspects of decision-making testosterone acted on. The modeling revealed that testosterone compared to placebo did not deteriorate reinforcement learning per se. Rather, when being watched, the hormone altered the degree to which the learned information on choice value translated to action selection. Taken together, our study provides novel evidence of testosterone’s effects on implicit reward processing, through which it counteracts conformity and deceptive reputation strategies. Springer International Publishing 2023-04-03 2023-09 /pmc/articles/PMC10425362/ /pubmed/37012404 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01570-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Kutlikova, Hana H.
Zhang, Lei
Eisenegger, Christoph
van Honk, Jack
Lamm, Claus
Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title_full Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title_fullStr Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title_full_unstemmed Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title_short Testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
title_sort testosterone eliminates strategic prosocial behavior through impacting choice consistency in healthy males
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37012404
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01570-y
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