Casto, KV;
Prasad, S;
Josephs, RA;
Zilioli, S;
Welker, K;
Maslov, A;
Jones, AC;
(2023)
No Compelling Evidence that Self-Reported Personality Traits Explain Basal Testosterone and Cortisol’s Associations with Status-Relevant Behavior.
Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology
10.1007/s40750-023-00210-5.
(In press).
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE: A goal of behavioral neuroendocrinology is to understand how basal hormone levels relate to behavior. Studies of human participants sometimes measure self-reported personality traits, in addition to or instead of direct behavioral observation. Although personality traits often predict their respective behaviors, whether personality explains hormone-behavior relationships remains unclear. METHODS: We obtained data from eight previous studies (total N = 985) that examined baseline testosterone and cortisol as predictors of status-relevant behavior (competitiveness, dominance, risk-taking, aggression, affiliation, and social status). We tested whether the previously reported hormone-behavior relationships are mediated by self-reported personality traits (e.g., trait dominance, prestige, extraversion). As a secondary research question, we also tested whether trait dominance moderated the testosterone-behavior relationships. RESULTS: As expected, self-reported personality traits often predicted status-relevant behaviors, but there was little evidence that traits also correlated with basal testosterone or the testosterone × cortisol interaction. Across all eight studies, personality traits did not significantly mediate hormone-behavior relationships. Indeed, the effect sizes of the hormone-behavior relationships were robust to the inclusion of personality traits as covariates. Further, we did not find strong or consistent evidence that trait dominance moderates the testosterone-behavior association. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that basal testosterone and cortisol predict status-related behavior independent of self-reported personality. We discuss how these results may have broader implications for the physiological mechanisms by which testosterone and cortisol influence behavior, a process that could be unconscious and automatic. We also discuss alternative explanations, limitations, and future directions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | No Compelling Evidence that Self-Reported Personality Traits Explain Basal Testosterone and Cortisol’s Associations with Status-Relevant Behavior |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s40750-023-00210-5 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-023-00210-5 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Testosterone, Cortisol, Status, Dominance, Leadership, Personality, Self-reports |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166600 |
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