Researchers looking into the interplay between hormones and ethics discovered something that will shock nobody who dates men: that those with high testosterone levels end up being bigger jerks.
As PsyPost reports, a recent study out of HEC Montréal complicates previous research associating high T-levels with business success by linking the hormone with unethical behavior in sexual scenarios — or, in the popular lexicon, comportment that might be characterized by the word “fuckboy,” which refers to often-promiscuous men who treat the women they date as disposable.
The Canadian researchers’ study focused on 83 men and 91 women who were asked to provide saliva samples — to test testosterone levels — and answer a series of questions, first about how they felt when romantically pursuing someone of the opposite sex who was also being pursued by someone else of their same sex, followed by questions about ethics such as how comfortable they felt “taking some questionable deductions on your income tax return” or “having an affair with a married man/woman.”
Published in the British Journal of Psychology, the resulting study found that a positive correlation between high testosterone levels and willingness to engage in unethical behavior when it came to “intrasexual competition,” the psychobabble term for when two or more men are vying for one woman’s attention.
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Interestingly, the correlation between testosterone and unethical behavior wasn’t found for the men in the control section of the studies (who were asked about their laundry preferences) or for women in either the control or variable sections.
While the GEC Montréal study doesn’t focus on the way these (presumable heterosexual or bisexual) men treat the women in question, the concept that men will behave more aggressively and less ethically when trying to “win” a woman is, in this reporter’s book, classic fuckboy behavior.
The jury’s still out, however, about whether high T-levels are related to being incapable of returning a text message.
READ MORE: Testosterone levels in men linked to unethical behavioral intentions in response to intrasexual competition [PsyPost]
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