Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China; School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2024 Mar;161:106948. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106948. Epub 2023 Dec 28.
Previous research indicates that higher testosterone levels are related to increased aggressive and dominant behaviors, particularly in males. One possible mechanism for these hormone-behavior associations could involve threat perception. However, the causal influence of testosterone on men's recognition of threatening facial expressions remains unknown. Here, we tested the causal effect of exogenous testosterone on men's sensitivity to facial threat by combining a psychophysical task with computational modeling. We administered a single dose (150 mg) of testosterone or placebo gel to healthy young men (n = 120) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-participant design. Participants were presented with morphed emotional faces mixing anger/fear and neutral expressions and made judgments about the emotional expression. Across typical regression analysis, signal detection analysis, and drift diffusion modeling, our results consistently showed that individuals who received testosterone (versus placebo) exhibited a lower perceived sensitivity to angry facial expressions. But we observed no significant effects of testosterone administration on fearful facial expressions. The findings indicate that testosterone attenuates sensitivity to facial threat, especially angry facial expressions, which could lead to a misestimation of others' dominance and an increase in one's own aggressive and dominant behaviors.
先前的研究表明，较高的睾丸激素水平与攻击性和支配性行为的增加有关，特别是在男性中。这些激素与行为之间的关联的一种可能机制可能涉及到威胁感知。然而，睾丸激素对男性识别威胁面部表情的因果影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们通过将心理物理学任务与计算模型相结合，测试了外源性睾丸激素对男性对面部威胁敏感性的因果影响。我们采用双盲、安慰剂对照、被试间设计，向 120 名健康年轻男性单次给予 150 毫克睾丸酮或安慰剂凝胶。参与者被呈现混合愤怒/恐惧和中性表情的混合情绪面孔，并对面部表情做出判断。通过典型的回归分析、信号检测分析和漂移扩散模型，我们的结果一致表明，接受睾丸酮（与安慰剂相比）的个体对愤怒面部表情的感知敏感性降低。但是，我们没有观察到睾丸酮给药对恐惧面部表情的显著影响。这些发现表明，睾丸酮会降低对面部威胁的敏感性，特别是对愤怒的面部表情的敏感性，这可能导致对他人优势的错误估计，并增加自己的攻击性和支配性行为。
