Basal testosterone, leadership and dominance: A field study and meta-analysis

This article examines the role of basal testosterone as a potential biological marker of leadership and hierarchy in the workplace. First, we report the result of a study with a sample of male employees from different corporate organizations in the Netherlands (n = 125). Results showed that employees with higher basal testosterone levels reported a more authoritarian leadership style, but this relationship was absent among those who currently held a real management position (i.e., they had at least one subordinate). Furthermore, basal testosterone levels were not different between managers and non managers, and testosterone was not associated with various indicators of status and hierarchy such as number of subordinates, income, and position in the organizational hierarchy. In our meta-analysis (second study), we showed that basal testosterone levels were not associated with leadership in men nor in women (9 studies, n = 1103). Taken together, our findings show that basal testosterone is not associated with having a leadership position in the corporate world or related to leadership styles in leaders. We suggest that basal testosterone could play a role in acquiring leadership positions through dominant and authoritarian behavior. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.