Testosterone May Make Women Less Trusting

(HealthDay News) -- It turns out that testosterone might be responsible for more than masculinity and Hollywood action movies: A new study suggests that women who get doses of the hormone are less trusting of strangers, a possible sign that testosterone boosts levels of caution.

The research doesn't prove a direct connection between testosterone, which is found in both sexes. But it does appear to indicate that the hormone helps reduce trust in women and, "in our opinion, protects them from harm," said study co-author Jack van Honk, a psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

The overall role of testosterone in the body remains something of a mystery. "We don't know a lot, to be completely honest," said Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at Northwestern University who studies testosterone and how it affects decision-making. The hormone seems to be connected to aggression, she said, but "nobody really knows the mechanism by which testosterone changes behavior."

To make matters more complicated in the world of science, it's less clear what it does to women, she said, and there have been relatively few studies into testosterone's effects on them. Read more...

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