title: Salivary testosterone change following monetary wins and losses predicts future financial risk-taking.
abstract: While baseline testosterone has recently been implicated in risk-taking in men, less is known about the effects of changing levels of testosterone on financial risk. Here we attempt to influence testosterone in men by having them win or lose money in a chance-based competition against another male opponent. We employ two treatments where we vary the amount of money at stake so that we can directly compare winners to losers who earn the same amount, thereby abstracting from income effects. We find that men who experience a greater increase in bioactive testosterone take on more risk, an association that remains when controlling for whether the participant won the competition. In fact, whether subjects won the competition did not predict future risk. These results suggest that testosterone change, and thus individual differences in testosterone reactivity, rather than the act of winning or losing, influence financial risk-taking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, 3720 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. Electronic address: capicella@psych.upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Coren L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Apicella
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden. Electronic address: anna.dreber@hhs.se.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dreber
authors.affiliation: Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, 1 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States; The Research Institute for Industrial Economics (IFN), P.O. Box 55665, 102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Electronic address: jmollers@fas.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mollerstrom
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003163:Competitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry*; D012919:Social Behavior; D013739:Testosterone / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D013739:Testosterone
keywords: Risk aversion; Testosterone; Winner–loser effect