Enter Dorien, Spinhoven Philip, Roelofs Karin
Leiden University, Institute of Psychology, Leiden, The Netherlands; Radboud University Nijmegen, Behavioural Science Institute, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Leiden University, Institute of Psychology, Leiden, The Netherlands; Leiden University Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Horm Behav. 2014 Apr;65(4):351-4. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2014.02.001. Epub 2014 Feb 12.
Testosterone is an important regulator of social-motivational behavior and is known for its dominance-enhancing and social-anxiolytic properties. However, to date no studies have systematically investigated the causal effect of testosterone on actual social approach-avoidance behavior in humans. The present study sets out to test the effects of testosterone administration in healthy female volunteers using an objective implicit measure of social motivational behavior: the social Approach-Avoidance Task, a reaction time task requiring participants to approach or avoid visually presented emotional (happy, angry, and neutral) faces. Participants showed significantly diminished avoidance tendencies to angry faces after testosterone administration. Testosterone did not affect approach-avoidance tendencies to social affiliation (happy) faces. Thus, a single dose testosterone administration reduces automatic avoidance of social threat and promotes relative increase of threat approach tendencies in healthy females. These findings further the understanding of the neuroendocrine regulation of social motivational behavior and may have direct treatment implications for social anxiety, characterized by persistent social avoidance.
睾酮是社会动机行为的重要调节因子，以其增强支配地位和缓解社交焦虑的特性而闻名。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究系统地调查睾酮对人类实际社交趋近-回避行为的因果效应。本研究旨在使用一种客观的社会动机行为隐性测量方法——社会趋近-回避任务，来测试健康女性志愿者中睾酮给药的效果。社会趋近-回避任务是一项反应时间任务，要求参与者接近或回避视觉呈现的情绪面孔（开心、愤怒和中性）。睾酮给药后，参与者对愤怒面孔的回避倾向显著降低。睾酮对社交归属（开心）面孔的趋近-回避倾向没有影响。因此，单次给予睾酮可减少对社会威胁的自动回避，并促进健康女性中威胁趋近倾向的相对增加。这些发现进一步加深了对社会动机行为神经内分泌调节的理解，可能对以持续社交回避为特征的社交焦虑症有直接的治疗意义。
