Testosterone, the fact-checking hormone.

BBC reports on what appears to be (oversimplifying here) a hormonal link between skepticism and aggression:

To test the impact of testosterone on trust, the study authors from Utrecht University and the University of Cape Town, gave 24 young women with an average age of 20 years a dose of the hormone or a placebo.

They then asked them to look at photographs of unfamiliar faces and rate them according to the trustworthiness of the faces shown.

Researchers found that those women who rated the faces as most trustworthy after the placebo – the high-trusting women – scored the photographs an average 10 points lower after taking testosterone.

However, women who showed little trustworthiness in the faces when given the placebo showed no changed in their ratings after receiving testosterone.

So much for those plans to increase the libidos of my unsuspecting victims with testosterone mickeys. Even if it worked, they won’t be unsuspecting for long….