Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Neuropsychopharmacology. 2023 Sep;48(10):1541-1550. doi: 10.1038/s41386-023-01570-y. Epub 2023 Apr 3.
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.
当人类的行为受到他人观察时，他们会比独自行动时更具有策略性的亲社会性。我们采用精神药理学的方法，研究了这种观众驱动的亲社会性的内分泌和计算机制。192 名男性参与者接受了单次剂量的睾丸素（150 毫克）或安慰剂，并执行了一个亲社会和自我受益的强化学习任务。至关重要的是，任务是在私下进行还是在被观察时进行。竞争理论表明，这种激素可能会削弱或增强对观众的依赖的亲社会性。我们表明，外源性睾丸素完全消除了策略性的，即假装的亲社会性，从而减少了对观众期望的顺从。接下来，我们进行了强化学习漂移扩散计算建模，以阐明睾丸素作用于决策的哪些潜在方面。建模结果表明，与安慰剂相比，睾丸素本身并没有恶化强化学习。相反，当被观察时，激素改变了所学到的关于选择价值的信息转化为行动选择的程度。总之，我们的研究提供了睾丸素对隐性奖励处理影响的新证据，通过这种处理，它抵制了从众和欺骗性声誉策略。
