No Compelling Evidence that Self-Reported Personality Traits Explain Basal Testosterone and Cortisol’s Associations with Status-Relevant Behavior

OBJECTIVE: A goal of behavioral neuroendocrinology is to understand how basal hormone levels relate to behavior. Studies of human participants sometimes measure self-reported personality traits, in addition to or instead of direct behavioral observation. Although personality traits often predict their respective behaviors, whether personality explains hormone-behavior relationships remains unclear. METHODS: We obtained data from eight previous studies (total N = 985) that examined baseline testosterone and cortisol as predictors of status-relevant behavior (competitiveness, dominance, risk-taking, aggression, affiliation, and social status). We tested whether the previously reported hormone-behavior relationships are mediated by self-reported personality traits (e.g., trait dominance, prestige, extraversion). As a secondary research question, we also tested whether trait dominance moderated the testosterone-behavior relationships. RESULTS: As expected, self-reported personality traits often predicted status-relevant behaviors, but there was little evidence that traits also correlated with basal testosterone or the testosterone × cortisol interaction. Across all eight studies, personality traits did not significantly mediate hormone-behavior relationships. Indeed, the effect sizes of the hormone-behavior relationships were robust to the inclusion of personality traits as covariates. Further, we did not find strong or consistent evidence that trait dominance moderates the testosterone-behavior association. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that basal testosterone and cortisol predict status-related behavior independent of self-reported personality. We discuss how these results may have broader implications for the physiological mechanisms by which testosterone and cortisol influence behavior, a process that could be unconscious and automatic. We also discuss alternative explanations, limitations, and future directions

Correction to: No Compelling Evidence that Self-Reported Personality Traits Explain Basal Testosterone and Cortisol’s Associations with Status-Relevant Behavior

The originally published version of this article contained mistakes. The article note that can be found in the first page of the published article that says “These authors contributed equally” should be changed to “The first two authors contributed equally to this work”

Hormonal underpinnings of status conflict: Testosterone and cortisol are related to decisions and satisfaction in the hawk-dove game

A contribution to a special issue on Hormones and Human Competition.Testosterone is theorized to influence status-seeking behaviors such as social dominance and competitive behavior, but supporting evidence is mixed. The present study tested the roles of testosterone and cortisol in the hawk-dove game, a dyadic economic decision-making paradigm in which earnings depend on one's own and the other player's choices. If one person selects the hawk strategy and the other person selects the dove strategy, the player who selected hawk attains a greater financial pay-off (status differentiation). The worst financial outcome occurs when both players choose the hawk strategy (status confrontation). Ninety-eight undergraduate students (42 men) provided saliva samples and played ten rounds of the hawk-dove game with another same-sex participant. In support of the hypothesis that testosterone is related to status concern, individuals higher in basal testosterone made more hawk decisions — decisions that harmed the other player. Acute decreases in cortisol were also associated with more hawk decisions. There was some empirical support for the dual-hormone hypothesis as well: basal testosterone was positively related to satisfaction in the game among low basal-cortisol individuals but not among high basal-cortisol individuals. There were no significant sex differences in these hormonal effects. The present findings align with theories of hormones and status-seeking behavior at the individual level, but they also open up new avenues for research on hormone profiles at the collective level. Our results suggest that the presence of two or more high-testosterone members increases the likelihood of status confrontations over a limited resource that can undermine collective outcomes

Clustering of tau-immunoreactive pathology in chronic traumatic encephalopathy

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disorder which may result from repetitive brain injury. A variety of tau-immunoreactive pathologies are present, including neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), neuropil threads (NT), dot-like grains (DLG), astrocytic tangles (AT), and occasional neuritic plaques (NP). In tauopathies, cellular inclusions in the cortex are clustered within specific laminae, the clusters being regularly distributed parallel to the pia mater. To determine whether a similar spatial pattern is present in CTE, clustering of the tau-immunoreactive pathology was studied in the cortex, hippocampus, and dentate gyrus in 11 cases of CTE and 7 cases of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathologic change (ADNC) without CTE. In CTE: (1) all aspects of tau-immunoreactive pathology were clustered and the clusters were frequently regularly distributed parallel to the tissue boundary, (2) clustering was similar in two CTE cases with minimal co-pathology compared with cases with associated ADNC or TDP-43 proteinopathy, (3) in a proportion of cortical gyri, estimated cluster size was similar to that of cell columns of the cortico-cortical pathways, and (4) clusters of the tau-immunoreactive pathology were infrequently spatially correlated with blood vessels. The NFT and NP in ADNC without CTE were less frequently randomly or uniformly distributed and more frequently in defined clusters than in CTE. Hence, the spatial pattern of the tau-immunoreactive pathology observed in CTE is typical of the tauopathies but with some distinct differences compared to ADNC alone. The spread of pathogenic tau along anatomical pathways could be a factor in the pathogenesis of the disease

Genome-wide analyses as part of the international FTLD-TDP whole-genome sequencing consortium reveals novel disease risk factors and increases support for immune dysfunction in FTLD

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration with neuronal inclusions of the TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (FTLD-TDP) represents the most common pathological subtype of FTLD. We established the international FTLD-TDP whole-genome sequencing consortium to thoroughly characterize the known genetic causes of FTLD-TDP and identify novel genetic risk factors. Through the study of 1131 unrelated Caucasian patients, we estimated that C9orf72 repeat expansions and GRN loss-of-function mutations account for 25.5% and 13.9% of FTLD-TDP patients, respectively. Mutations in TBK1 (1.5%) and other known FTLD genes (1.4%) were rare, and the disease in 57.7% of FTLD-TDP patients was unexplained by the known FTLD genes. To unravel the contribution of common genetic factors to the FTLD-TDP etiology in these patients, we conducted a two-stage association study comprising the analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from 517 FTLD-TDP patients and 838 controls, followed by targeted genotyping of the most associated genomic loci in 119 additional FTLD-TDP patients and 1653 controls. We identified three genome-wide significant FTLD-TDP risk loci: one new locus at chromosome 7q36 within the DPP6 gene led by rs118113626 (p value = 4.82e − 08, OR = 2.12), and two known loci: UNC13A, led by rs1297319 (p value = 1.27e − 08, OR = 1.50) and HLA-DQA2 led by rs17219281 (p value = 3.22e − 08, OR = 1.98). While HLA represents a locus previously implicated in clinical FTLD and related neurodegenerative disorders, the association signal in our study is independent from previously reported associations. Through inspection of our whole-genome sequence data for genes with an excess of rare loss-of-function variants in FTLD-TDP patients (n ≥ 3) as compared to controls (n = 0), we further discovered a possible role for genes functioning within the TBK1-related immune pathway (e.g., DHX58, TRIM21, IRF7) in the genetic etiology of FTLD-TDP. Together, our study based on the largest cohort of unrelated FTLD-TDP patients assembled to date provides a comprehensive view of the genetic landscape of FTLD-TDP, nominates novel FTLD-TDP risk loci, and strongly implicates the immune pathway in FTLD-TDP pathogenesis

Risk and protective factors for structural brain ageing in the eighth decade of life

Individuals differ markedly in brain structure, and in how this structure degenerates during ageing. In a large sample of human participants (baseline n = 731 at age 73 years; follow-up n = 488 at age 76 years), we estimated the magnitude of mean change and variability in changes in MRI measures of brain macrostructure (grey matter, white matter, and white matter hyperintensity volumes) and microstructure (fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity from diffusion tensor MRI). All indices showed significant average change with age, with considerable heterogeneity in those changes. We then tested eleven socioeconomic, physical, health, cognitive, allostatic (inflammatory and metabolic), and genetic variables for their value in predicting these differences in changes. Many of these variables were significantly correlated with baseline brain structure, but few could account for significant portions of the heterogeneity in subsequent brain change. Physical fitness was an exception, being correlated both with brain level and changes. The results suggest that only a subset of correlates of brain structure are also predictive of differences in brain ageing

Facial masculinity:How the choice of measurement method enables to detect its influence on behaviour

Recent research has explored the relationship between facial masculinity, human male behaviour and males' perceived features (i.e. attractiveness). The methods of measurement of facial masculinity employed in the literature are quite diverse. In the present paper, we use several methods of measuring facial masculinity to study the effect of this feature on risk attitudes and trustworthiness. We employ two strategic interactions to measure these two traits, a first-price auction and a trust game. We find that facial width-to-height ratio is the best predictor of trustworthiness, and that measures of masculinity which use Geometric Morphometrics are the best suited to link masculinity and bidding behaviour. However, we observe that the link between masculinity and bidding in the first-price auction might be driven by competitiveness and not by risk aversion only. Finally, we test the relationship between facial measures of masculinity and perceived masculinity. As a conclusion, we suggest that researchers in the field should measure masculinity using one of these methods in order to obtain comparable results. We also encourage researchers to revise the existing literature on this topic following these measurement methods