New analysis gives proof that narcissism moderates the connection between testosterone and generosity in males. The research, printed in Hormones and Behavior, discovered that probably the most beneficiant males tended to be low in endogenous testosterone and concurrently low in narcissism. Unexpectedly, nevertheless, the researchers additionally discovered that heightened testosterone ranges together with heightened narcissism was a major optimistic predictor of generosity.
“Physiological changes constantly occurring in living organisms are interconnected with behavioral outcomes in many intricate and fascinating ways,” stated co-author Magdalena Ziemiańska, a PhD scholar on the Polish Academy of Sciences. “We were curious to examine how a normal (i.e. baseline) level of testosterone is linked to social behavior.”
“A simple economic game was applied, in which the participants’ task was to divide points between themselves and a stranger,” Ziemiańska defined. “We wanted to check if a popular belief, derived from animal studies, that high testosterone level is connected with competitive, antisocial behaviors is true in humans.”
“We also wanted to find out how narcissism interacts with testosterone levels and how these interactions are linked to behavior,” added first writer Anna Z. Czarna, an affiliate professor at Jagiellonian University. “Narcissism and testosterone are associated with similar behavioral outcomes, such as aggression, competitiveness and striving for status, to the extent that narcissism is considered a stereotypically masculine trait.”
“This similarity was likely the reason why some scholars (such as Nicholas Holtzman and Michael Strube) speculated that high male narcissists might simply have higher baseline testosterone levels,” Czarna stated. “This idea has not been consistently backed up by research so far. Instead, more complex relations between narcissism and testosterone emerged. We aimed to contribute to further explanation of these mysteries.”
The researchers performed two research with 151 male members from Poland. The members first accomplished a validated measure of narcissistic persona traits. They additionally accomplished a scientific evaluation often called the Triple Dominance Measure, which is used to evaluate “the weight people assign to their own versus others’ outcomes in interdependent situations.”
In the Triple Dominance Measure, members are requested to think about that they’ve been randomly paired with one other individual, who’s a stranger. They are then offered with a collection of 9 useful resource allocation choices.
Based on their responses, “each participant can be classified as prosocial, competitive, or individualist. Prosocials maximize outcomes for both themselves and others (i. e., cooperation) and minimize differences between outcomes for themselves and others (i.e., equality); individualists maximize their own outcomes with little or no regard for others’ outcomes; and competitors maximize their own outcomes relative to others’ outcomes, seeking relative advantage over others,” the researchers defined.
Next, the members visited the laboratory and supplied two saliva samples — spaced 20 minutes aside — which have been used to measure testosterone ranges.
As anticipated, the researchers discovered that narcissism moderated the affiliation between testosterone and useful resource allocation choices. The findings point out that “high vs. low narcissism affects the relationship between testosterone level and generosity in men,” Ziemiańska defined.
However, not all of the findings have been in step with their hypotheses. The researchers had predicted that larger testosterone could be negatively related to the quantity of assets shared with others, and that this affiliation could be amplified by heightened narcissistic tendencies. But a extra difficult relationship emerged.
“In low narcissists, testosterone was linked to less prosocial behavior,” Ziemiańska instructed PsyPost. But “in high narcissists, testosterone was linked to more prosocial choices.”
“Altogether, the pattern of results was a bit counterintuitive,” she stated. “The two different factors i.e. psychological trait narcissism and the level of hormone testosterone influenced social behavior in a rather unexpected fashion. As mentioned before, popular beliefs are that high testosterone levels, as well as high narcissism, are linked to competitive, antisocial behavior (even explicit aggression).”
“This is why we were surprised to discover that, contrary to these popular beliefs, endogenous testosterone was associated with lower generosity among less narcissistic — thus more trustful, less cynical, more habitually generous, and less selfish — men,” Ziemiańska defined.
The findings may also have some sensible implications.
“One (perhaps somewhat funny) takeaway message from our study would be: if you are choosing a date, beware of highly narcissistic men who are simultaneously low on baseline testosterone – in our studies, they were the least generous (and most selfish) in their decisions,” Czarna added. “They shared the least resources with others. So, when going on a date with one of them – prepare to pick up the bill. Meanwhile, men who were low on both narcissism and testosterone were highly generous.”
“Looking at our results from yet another perspective, high baseline testosterone worked a bit like an equalizer,” the researcher defined. “Men with high testosterone behaved similarly, they split their resources in similar and moderately generous ways, regardless of their narcissism levels. Men low on baseline testosterone differed highly in their behavior, depending on their personalities: those highly narcissistic were significantly less generous than those with low narcissism levels.”
The findings shed new mild on how testosterone may work together with persona to affect conduct. But the researchers famous that scientists are nonetheless within the early levels of untangling the advanced relationships between psychological traits and organic processes.
“Our study was one of the few first studies that looked at the interplay between personality and hormonal levels,” Czarna defined. “There is still a lot to do. These relationships are usually complex, not straightforward. Multiple other personality traits as well as multiple other situational factors still await investigation in the context of their interactions with hormones.”
“Future studies involving larger groups of participants could measure implicit motives and situational factors (i.e., opportunities to increase status or challenges and threats to social standing) and assess their interactive influence on testosterone reactivity and behavioral outcomes,” Czarna stated. “Such studies promise to disentangle the effects of motives, situations, traits (i.e., narcissism), and testosterone.”
The research, “Narcissism moderates the association between basal testosterone and generosity in men“, was authored by Anna Z. Czarna, Magdalena Ziemiańska, Piotr Pawlicki, Justin M. Carre, and Constantine Sedikides.
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