Testosterone administration increases the computational impact of social evaluation on the updating of state self-esteem.

Jixin Long, Junsong Lu, Yang Hu, Philippe N Tobler, Yin Wu
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Abstract

Background: High self-esteem promotes well-being and buffers against anxiety. However, state self-esteem (SSE) is not stable but dynamically updated based on evaluations received from others. Particularly in men, decreased SSE are related to aberrant behaviors and clinical symptoms. A critical physiological mechanism underlying these associations could involve a sexual hormone, testosterone. However, the causal relationship between testosterone and the process of updating SSE in men remains unknown.

Methods: The study had a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-participants design. First, we administered a single dose (150 mg) of testosterone or placebo gel to healthy young men (n = 120). Subsequently, the participants completed a social evaluation task in which they adjusted prediction of potential evaluation by others and dynamically reported their SSE based on the social feedback they received. Meanwhile, we applied a computational modeling approach to investigate the dynamic changes in their SSE.

Results: Exogenous testosterone significantly influenced the participants' expectation of receiving positive social feedback from raters with different approval rates and separately amplified the changes in average SSE when the participants received positive or negative feedback from the raters. Even more importantly, computational modeling showed that the participants who received testosterone (versus the placebo) assigned a higher weight to expected social feedback and social prediction errors when updating their SSE.

Conclusions: The findings provide potential clinical implications for combining exogenous testosterone with interventions aimed at enhancing SSE through positive social feedback as a pre-clinical treatment for aberrant behaviors and clinical symptoms.

背景介绍高自尊心能促进幸福感并缓冲焦虑。然而,状态自尊(SSE)并不稳定,而是根据他人的评价动态更新的。特别是在男性中,自尊的降低与异常行为和临床症状有关。这些关联的关键生理机制可能涉及性激素--睾酮。然而,睾酮与男性自尊心更新过程之间的因果关系仍然未知:研究采用双盲、安慰剂对照、参与者间设计。首先,我们给健康的年轻男性(120 人)注射单剂量(150 毫克)的睾酮或安慰剂凝胶。随后,参与者完成了一项社会评价任务,在这项任务中,他们根据收到的社会反馈调整对他人潜在评价的预测,并动态报告自己的社会评价。同时,我们还采用了一种计算建模方法来研究他们的SSE的动态变化:结果:外源性睾酮明显影响了参与者从不同认可率的评价者那里获得积极社会反馈的预期,并分别放大了参与者从评价者那里获得积极或消极反馈时的平均SSE变化。更重要的是,计算模型显示,接受睾酮治疗的受试者(与安慰剂相比)在更新他们的SSE时,对预期的社会反馈和社会预测错误赋予了更高的权重:这些研究结果为将外源性睾酮与干预措施相结合提供了潜在的临床意义,这些干预措施旨在通过积极的社会反馈来增强SSE,以此作为异常行为和临床症状的临床前治疗方法。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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