Abstract
Testosterone has been associated with economically egoistic and materialistic behaviors, but -defensibly driven by reputable status seeking- also with economically fair, generous and cooperative behaviors. Problematically, social status and economic resources are inextricably intertwined in humans, thus testosterone’s primal motives are concealed. We critically addressed this issue by performing a placebo-controlled single-dose testosterone administration in young women, who played a game of bluff poker wherein concerns for status and resources collide. The profit-maximizing strategy in this game is to mislead the other players by bluffing randomly (independent of strength of the hand), thus also when holding very poor cards (cold bluffing). The profit-maximizing strategy also dictates the players in this poker game to never call the other players’ bluffs. For reputable-status seeking these materialistic strategies are disadvantageous; firstly, being caught cold bluffing damages one’s reputation by revealing deceptive intent, and secondly, not calling the other players’ bluffs signals submission in blindly tolerating deception. Here we show that testosterone administration in this game of bluff poker significantly reduces random bluffing, as well as cold bluffing, while significantly increasing calling. Our data suggest that testosterone in humans primarily motivates for reputable-status seeking, even when this elicits behaviors that are economically disadvantageous.
Highlights
Social dominance ensures access to key resources, such as food, shelter and mating partners, and is highly adaptive for the individuals’ welfare and procreation
Testosterone administration has increased generosity in the Trust Game[37], and the hormone decreased lying in a private game of dice[38]. These findings suggest that testosterone increases concerns for social reputation[35,36,37,38], and that the hormone does not motivate for status seeking through either greedy or deceitful strategies[27,30,39]
We investigate the effects of testosterone administration on bluffing and calling in Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s Poker Game[40], under the following premises: If testosterone administration compared to placebo results in an increase in random bluffing with more frequent cold bluffs and less calling, the hormone induces profit maximization
Summary
Social dominance ensures access to key resources, such as food, shelter and mating partners, and is highly adaptive for the individuals’ welfare and procreation. Testosterone administration has increased generosity in the Trust Game[37], and the hormone decreased lying in a private game of dice[38] These findings suggest that testosterone increases concerns for social reputation[35,36,37,38], and that the hormone does not motivate for status seeking through either greedy or deceitful strategies[27,30,39]. We investigated the effects of testosterone administration on behavior in a paradigm wherein concerns for status and resources uniquely collide: a two-person poker game developed by Von Neumann and Morgenstern[40]. Real-life poker begins by dealing out five cards, a so-called hand, out of a deck to each player These hands are quantified in the game-theoretical framework by Von Neumann and Morgenstern[40] as a random number within a continuous distribution between 0 and 1.
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