More testosterone, more aggression?

That’s what most people think, testosterone has a lousy reputation. Wrongly so. For example, giving someone testosterone does not make them more aggressive. So, what does testosterone really do?

Testosterone makes you do whatever boosts your social status.

And this depends on the rules: If status comes from winning, testosterone makes you competitive. But, amazingly, if status depends on being nice to others, testosterone makes you 𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗿!

Now, what happens when you succeed and climb the social ladder?

One, testosterone level goes up. Two, your brain becomes more sensitive to testosterone. And what is the consequence of that? You do even more of what you did to succeed, you 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗱.

In the words of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, when in wild capitalist Russia of the early 1990s he was asked whether he was greedy: “Not so much at the beginning, but now all the more.” Our brain is like the soccer coach on the touch line shouting: You got it, now keep going!

What does this tell us for corporate 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀?

When you establish the right rules, testosterone will help you. If you want to boost prosocial behavior, make proof of helping others a formal component of your staff appraisal process. As the MBB consulting firms do.