Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 8, Pages 3448-3452Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1011891108
Keywords
prenatal priming; steroid hormones; mind reading
Categories
Funding
- Utrecht University
- Hope for Depression Research Foundation [RGA 9-015]
- Netherlands Society of Scientific Research Innovational Research [452-07-012]
- Netherlands Society of Scientific Research Brain and Cognition [056-24-010]
- United Kingdom Medical Research Council
- Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation
- Medical Research Council [G0600977] Funding Source: researchfish
- MRC [G0600977] Funding Source: UKRI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
During social interactions we automatically infer motives, intentions, and feelings from bodily cues of others, especially from the eye region of their faces. This cognitive empathic ability is one of the most important components of social intelligence, and is essential for effective social interaction. Females on average out-perform males in this cognitive empathy, and the male sex hormone testosterone is thought to be involved. Testosterone may not only down-regulate social intelligence organizationally, by affecting fetal brain development, but also activationally, by its current effects on the brain. Here, we show that administration of testosterone in 16 young women led to a significant impairment in their cognitive empathy, and that this effect is powerfully predicted by a proxy of fetal testosterone: the right-hand second digit-to-fourth digit ratio. Our data thus not only demonstrate down-regulatory effects of current testosterone on cognitive empathy, but also suggest these are preprogrammed by the very same hormone prenatally. These findings have importance for our understanding of the psychobiology of human social intelligence.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available