Study Shows Testosterone is Bad For High-Stakes Decisions

itwbennett writes "According to a study by researchers at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, young CEOs with higher levels of testosterone in their system are 'more likely to initiate, scrap or resist mergers and acquisitions' — even when it's not in their best interest. 'We find a strong association between male CEOs being young and their withdrawal rate of initiated mergers and acquisition,' says Prof. Levi, whose research relies on the established correlation between relative youth and increased levels of testosterone. 'For instance, young CEOs, who have higher levels of testosterone, tend to reject offers even when this is against their interest.'"

Comments

Easily solved

[Jedi Alec]

Make castration a standard step of getting an MBA?

One way or the other its bound to make the world a better place ;-)

Control for experience?

[phantomcircuit]

How did they control for experience? Pump old guys full of testosterone?

RTFA. SRSLY.

[Moraelin]

Actually, no, if you actually RTFA (I know, I know, it's Slashdot), you'll find out that no, it's also based on a study where they actually asked people to play a sort of game, and they actually measured testosterone levels. Those who had more testosterone, tended to be more competitive even when it resulted in losing the game.

In fact those with high testosterone levels ended up doing things as irrational in any imaginable circumstance as to basically reject an offer of free money, just because they perceived it as being too low. You don't want someone like that making economic decisions.

Just age and experience had nothing to do with it. Those test subjects who were just as young but more deficient in the testosterone department tended to take more rational decisions.

Basically, thinking with your dick is bad. The stereotype of the Real Man with real balls may have been a plus when it came to making him do dumb stuff like going to get stabbed at for his king, but it turns out to be a liability when the job requires more thinking with the head upstairs than with the one below the belt. You want someone taking economic decisions because they make logical and mathematical sense, not because it's his kind of measuring dick size against the partners.

Re:RTFA. SRSLY.

[10101001 10101001]

In fact those with high testosterone levels ended up doing things as irrational in any imaginable circumstance as to basically reject an offer of free money, just because they perceived it as being too low. You don't want someone like that making economic decisions.

Just a small point, but the "ultimatum game" has been conducted many times and the consistent issue it raises is that people often reject low offers, even though as you note it's to reject free money. The new study in part gives one possible explanation for why young men might reject free money in the "ultimatum game", but it doesn't explain everyone else's reasons nor is there any evidence that it's the young males who were the group that most often rejected in previous "ultimatum game" studies. Btw, the Nash equilibrium, optimal solution for splitting $100 would be to offer $0.01 and keep $99.99. Would you accept that?

Re:RTFA. SRSLY.

[martin-boundary]

Btw, the Nash equilibrium, optimal solution for splitting $100 would be to offer $0.01 and keep $99.99. Would you accept that?

How is this a Nash equilibrium?

BTW, it's quite rational to reject $0.01 when the other player receives $99.99, since after the game the richer player has more options available to spend money than the poorer player. If the two players have zero dollars in their pockets to begin with, then any outcome away from 50/50 leads to relative inequality after the game. If the first player offers more than 50 to the other, then he knows that the second player will accept, leading to inequatiy and an incentive to reduce the amount back to 50. But if he offers less than 50 to the other player, then there will be inequality unless the second player rejects. So it's irrational to offer less than 50, and Nash is at 50/50.

Re:RTFA. SRSLY.

[L4t3r4lu5]

Which is why you don't play the Ultimatum Game against each other. You are competing against yourself in your current situation. If you take the $20, you become $20 richer. If you don't take the $20, you are no richer.

Your "Give me more than you" ultimatum results in a persistent loss for both, which is undesirable. Relatively you are no worse or better off. Realistically you are poorer.

Re:RTFA. SRSLY.

[joss]

The 'rejection of free money' is from a test where A is given $100 and has to offer a proportion to B. If B rejects, neither A nor B get anything. The ultimatum game.

The test is supposed to measure irrationality. Since the game is only played once, economists say whatever the offer made by A, if it is more than zero, then B should accept. According to their limited reasoning powers, A should offer B $1 and B should accept. In real life, A typically offers much more than that, and B typically rejects an offers of less than around 40%.

Far from demonstrating the irrationality of the participants the test nicely demonstrates two forms of stupidity particuarly prevelant in economists.

The first form of stupidity is thinking that if something is impossible to measure in monetary terms, then it has no value. They think that by rejecting the offer B gets nothing. Actually, B gets the satisfaction of punishing someone for being stingy. Suppose we were playing with $100 and A offered me $1. I would certainly reject the offer as the satisfaction of seeing A get nothing for being a dick would be worth more than $1.

The second form of stupidity here is the belief that if something cannot be modelled, then its not real. This situation has elements of paradox which makes it hard to model. If we ignore the fact that non-monetary things can have value, there's still something interesting going on here. The fact the B might behave 'irrationally' by rejecting A's offer means that in practise, B ends up making more money than he otherwise would. A knows that B will reject an offer he deams too low, and so A offers much more than he would if he knew that B would take anything he offered. If we stick strictly to money, after the offer has been made B should always take it.. its supposedly 'irrational' not to. However, without the fear of irrationality A would always take $99 and B would get $1. Actually B typically gets much more than that so the 'irrational' behaviour is actually smarter.

re: Not in their best interests

[mysidia]

are 'more likely to initiate, scrap or resist mergers and acquisitions' — even when it's not in their best interest. '

'For instance, young CEOs, who have higher levels of testosterone, tend to reject offers even when this is against their interest.'

First of all it says "even when it's not in their best interest". This is a strange claim. CEOs are not supposed to make decisions that are in their best interest anyways, they are specifically supposed to make decisions that are in their company's best interest, and in particular, that best serve the shareholders of their company. To intentionally do otherwise would be reckless, not what they agree to do by becoming CEO, and could get them sued, nonetheless.

Second of all what is in a person (or company's) best interest is subjective. To claim they are acting against their interest, you are applying prescriptive measures --- that they in your opinion should do certain things. For example "facebook should have agreed to merge with twitter". That is your opinion, which might or might not bear out.

To cast a point of view about whether it was in their best interests or not is "in retrospect". In retrospect it is always easy to say someone should or should not have done that, knowing the outcome. Not knowing the outcome, it is not so clear, and they are CEO there, not you, which is presumably out of some merit.

“We find a strong association between male CEOs being young and their withdrawal rate of initiated mergers and acquisition,” says Prof. Levi, whose research relies on the established correlation between relative youth and increased levels of testosterone.

I sense a case of post-hoc ergo propter hoc here.

Perhaps a better explanation would be, they are young, so they are as individuals less experienced, less wise, their age could have something to do with it.

Also, the fact that they're male doesn't mean testosterone -- if a different pattern was observed in females, there would be other differences besides testosterone difference.

You can't have an anecdotal study and have it be a legitimate study. You can't rely on knowing the fact that males of that age tend to have higher levels of testosterone and assume these groups of CEOs have higher levels of testosterone because they fall into that age category.

If you drew blood, you might find a totally different correlation between these CEOs and low levels of testosterone. Without even sampling the variable you are trying to make claims about, this is not an experiment, and not science.

Beware!: Infinite Loop Ahead! *head a splodes*....

[rts008]

...not politically correct to call politicians...

I see what you did there...sneaky...

You tried to inject one of the biggest, baddest, most highly concentrated Oxymorons known to mankind('politically correct') into a funny jab at politicians!

You tricky devil. ;-)

Leading, no doubt, to the adage...

[hyades1]

..."Age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm every time."

Gynocentric crappola

[Sqreater]

More anti-male blindness, demonizing, and beyond-the-pale gynocentrism. It doesn't seem to matter that everything we have as far as science, industry, technology, and government comes from male agressive creativity -- testosterone mediated inventive behaviors. The passive "doership" of the estrogenoni seems to be the only good and useful thing in our politically correct society. I guess James Watt, Maudsley, Edison, Ford, Einstein, Jobs, Gates.....were all making bad testosterone-filled mistakes. Far from mistakes, they made good, aggressive, risk-taking decisions driven by testosterone. It is more likely that the half of the human population that does not do these things is poisoned by its estrogen into being passive to the point of making NO decisions than possibly wrong aggressively creative decisions. Researchers, stop the constant male bashing.

Re:Gynocentric crappola

[eluusive]

It's funny, because if you go find their actual paper, they didn't measure testosterone at all. "In this paper we examine whether testosterone, which is associated with male dominance seeking and which we have proxied by male CEO age, is associated with M&A withdrawals, the use of tender offers, and bid initiation." Fucking ridiculous, I'm surprised this paper even got published.

Re:Testosterone? Really?

[eluusive]

From their actual paper's conclusion section: "In this paper we examine whether testosterone, which is associated with male dominance seeking and which we have proxied by male CEO age, is associated with M&A withdrawals, the use of tender offers, and bid initiation." Fucking ridiculous, I'm surprised this paper even got published. They didn't even sample anyone's testosterone.

Big can of Worms

[BlueParrot]

Sex hormones can affect you a lot, at least some people. I used to be among those who insisted psychological differences between men and women were cultural, or due to upbringing and whatnot, then eventually I came to the point where I could no longer go on suppressing my feelings, and I called up a gender identity clinic, explained I felt fairly certain I'm transsexual, that I had tried my very best just living as a man , accepting it and that I just couldn't do it anymore. At the time I think I had pretty much ceased to eat out of depression.

Since then I've had most of my testosterone replaced with estrogen, and aside from very rapidly ( within weeks ) making me feel better than I even thought was possible, it has also caused a lot of other changes. Some of which are quite common among people in my situation, others are more individual. It's hard to determine which changes are due to the hormones and which are merely due to feeling more comfortable with my body, but some are so common and well documented that psychiatrists and endocrinologists more or less assume them to be hormonal. There's always exceptions, and the effects are variable and individual, but the following is frequently described:

Reduced sex drive
Increased appetite
A change in orgasmic pattern, moving it closer to that described by women
Increased skin sensitivity.

The last bit is actually likely due to the skin going thinner and hence a physical rather than psychological change. Bruises also stay visible longer, acne tends to improve, and many have trouble with dry skin. For me the last bit was so bad I developed severe rashes and had to go on a course of cortisone treatment. Nowadays I can keep it in control with normal skin lotion however.

Now I don't mean with this that all stereotypes you hear about men and women are true, or that this particular study is even worth the paper it is written on. After all I'm arguably quiet different from most people ( or otherwise I would never had to do this ), and hence my experiences or those of people similar to me can't really be extrapolated to the rest of the population.

However I can tell you one thing for sure. Hormones can do a lot of things to a person. Some people want to insist I'm just imagining it or that it may be a placebo effect or similar. It's a real pity the physical effects ( like breast development ) are partially irreversible, because otherwise I could just tell those people to go try for themselves. It really does affect you quite a bit.