title: Exogenous testosterone decreases men's personal distance in a social threat context.
abstract: Testosterone can motivate human approach and avoidance behavior. Specifically, the conscious recognition of and implicit reaction to angry facial expressions is influenced by testosterone. The study tested whether exogenous testosterone modulates the personal distance (PD) humans prefer in a social threat context.
  
  
  
  82 healthy male participants underwent either transdermal testosterone (testosterone group) or placebo application (placebo group). Each participant performed a computerized stop-distance task before (T1) and 3.5h after (T2) treatment, during which they indicated how closely they would approach a human, animal or virtual character with varying emotional expression.
  
  
  
  Men's PD towards humans and animals varied as a function of their emotional expression. In the testosterone group, a pre-post comparison indicated that the administration of 50mg testosterone was associated with a small but significant reduction of men's PD towards aggressive individuals. Men in the placebo group did not change the initially chosen PD after placebo application independent of the condition. However comparing the testosterone and placebo group after testosterone administration did not reveal significant differences. While the behavioral effect was small and only observed as within-group effect it was repeatedly and selectively shown for men's PD choices towards an angry woman, angry man and angry dog in the testosterone group. In line with the literature, our findings in young men support the influential role of exogenous testosterone on male's approach behavior during social confrontations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. Electronic address: lwagels@ukaachen.de.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wagels
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich and RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Sina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Radke
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Katharina Sophia
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Goerlich
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich and RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Habel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; JARA-Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich and RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine 10, Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Mikhail
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Votinov
mesh_terms: D000279:Administration, Cutaneous; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D000786:Anger / Q000187:drug effects; D000818:Animals; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000187:drug effects*; D004285:Dogs; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000187:drug effects; D012931:Social Environment; D013739:Testosterone / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000494:pharmacology; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D013739:Testosterone
keywords: Exogenous testosterone; Personal distance; Social threat