Alan C. Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 Hormones may be partners in crime for unethical behavior A joint study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University suggests that certain hormones such as testosterone and cortisol could play a major role in -- and be a predictor for -- a person committing unethical behavior such as lying, cheating or stealing, according to a statement released by UT-Austin. . . . Researchers conducted an experiment in which 117 participants were asked to take a math test that would reward them with money for each correct answer. Here's the twist: the participants were also asked to grade their own papers and report the number of correct answers to the test administrators. The researchers took saliva samples from the potential cheats before they took the test, in order to measure the level of the reproductive hormone testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol in their systems. They found that the participants who had high levels of both hormones were most likely to lie about their total number of correct answers in order to get more money. The participants who cheated also reported feeling less stressed than those who didn't and had lower levels of cortisol following the test than before it, according to the statement. . . . "Elevated testosterone decreases the fear of punishment while increasing sensitivity to reward. Elevated cortisol is linked to an uncomfortable state of chronic stress that can be extremely debilitating," said Josephs. "Testosterone furnishes the courage to cheat, and elevated cortisol provides a reason to cheat." 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakethehuman Posted August 2, 2015 Share Posted August 2, 2015 correlation and causation is tricky here, do people that lie have more test or do people with higher test levels lie more? need more and better studies to answer that, until then its no big surprise that people with different behaviours have different levels of certain chemicals Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamsjar Posted August 2, 2015 Share Posted August 2, 2015 I'd like to get access to this (and it's references) when it comes out. Very fascinating stuff and can only glean so much from this CNET article. Weird thing is that chronic stress (and elevated cortisol) tends to /decrease/ testosterone levels, so it's interesting that the cheaters had high cortisol /and/ a "high-T moment." My next question would be: what environment produces that odd combination of people with high testosterone and also high cortisol? It seems the research is still very much in progress on all this stuff. Here's a free article (complete with references) that may lead in the right direction: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2834845/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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