No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy • Hacker News Board

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#151

Post by tomlock » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:50 AM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #144

tomlock wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's cool is that if people take a more nuanced view of gender and sex than saying it can be measured by one test with only two options, it means they can't take the narrow view that either of those things are binary. Here's hoping!

I don't think that's what's being suggested at here at all. In the past few years, there has been an overemphasis on "maleness" being bad and leading to negative. In a lot of western social history (and even a lot of eastern societies) there has always been the concept of "the divine feminine" (Mother earth, goddesses and so fourth). We've seen the growing emphasis of bad men and toxic masculinity; as if the man has…

The concept of toxic masculinity is actually one you ought to be in favour of. Toxic masculinity as a general rule makes no deterministic link between toxicity and being a particular biological sex - of which there are many different configurations.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#152

Post by glaugh » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

Most of the effects of administering testosterone (at least to men with clinically low levels) take weeks or months to appear. For example, interest in sex takes 3+ weeks to increase.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188848/

And much of the impact of testosterone happens in utero (Young boys and girls have similar levels; behavioral differences are driven by in utero exposure.)

This study seems to test a very narrow area where testosterone could influence empathy

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#153

Post by bonerman69 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #72

bonerman69 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing estrogen blood levels will literally cause any male-sex person to become more empathetic via oxytocin...

Probably better to say "assigned male at birth" -- I'm not genetically male, but everyone assumed I was until I got tested after transitioning. The best medically relevant definitions are "person on testosterone", "person on estrogen" etc. There is a lot of suspicion that things like estrogen/androgen receptor binding affinity play a big role in gender identity and brain development, and we haven't even scratched the…

I don't understand how 'person on test/est' makes sense in context of this post. The article implies just the opposite. That xy chromasome males (who all experienced a fetal testosterone surge, assuming they have normal male sex organs) tolerate testosterone better than males who had a smaller test surge, and obviously more than an xx female.

I guess chromesomes are biological not 'medical'?

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#154

Post by bonerman69 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

ve55 wrote: post #9

>In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.” I don't see how this is related, unless you think the only 'maleness' that can exist in a brain is testosterone levels. There are so many things that could be tested and analyzed here besides testosterone levels.

I believe the understanding is that the amount of male brainedness is dictated by the magnitude of the fetal testosterone surge.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#155

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #82

I think a lot more work needs to be done in quantifying "cognitive empathy" before we can begin to do studies like this. Their methodology for quantification of something so complex is extremely primitive.

[deleted]

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#156

Post by jcranberry » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:45 AM UTC

ve55 wrote: post #9

>In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.” I don't see how this is related, unless you think the only 'maleness' that can exist in a brain is testosterone levels. There are so many things that could be tested and analyzed here besides testosterone levels.

I believe this rationale originates from Simon Baron-Cohen who pioneered several salient in-vogue or influential ideas in psychology. He was the one who came up with the idea of autism reflecting an 'extreme male brain'. More specifically he kind of uses the term 'extreme male' as magnified version of 'male brain' which trends towards systematization rather than empathizing. Around the time he formulated these theories I believe he conducted some studies trying to correlate testosterone levels or exposures in early ages and ToM deficit or something like that. I believe his results have been repeatedly challenged, but perhaps not been utterly conclusive. This study perhaps may be the nail in the coffin.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#157

Post by zozbot234 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 6:22 AM UTC

porknubbins wrote: post #116

rmilejczz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cognitive empathy is distinguished from affective empathy; put simply cognitive empathy is your perception of another persons emotional state and affective empathy is your perception of the correct emotional response to another persons emotional state.

Interesting, I wonder if theres is a term for people with good cognitive empathy but poor affective empathy because I often feel like I can read someone body language and signals but usually have trouble expressing sympathy to the extent that when I hear someone died I have to monitor closely to try to react appropriately and not say anything weird.

Those would be the psychopaths and sociopaths, but I don't think you're among them. These folks basically lack the relevant social emotions altogether, so they end up being quite materialistic and self-centered. They can and do figure out that other emotions somehow exist and that they're socially expected to show them, but they have no "hardwired" intuition for their affective implications, so they'll have a whole lot of trouble negotiating constructively with others. They're deeply prone to thinking that everyone else is just like themselves, self-centered and quite willing to screw others in pursuit of their own goals.

I.e. their affective impairments do have significant implications on the theory-of-mind/'cognitive' side of things, but those implications are very different from the troubles of someone on the autistic spectrum. In a way, they're the very opposite!

(In fact, if you're somewhat on the spectrum and basically aware of what makes psychopaths tick, you can even have a lot of fun spotting them and interacting with them. Their attempts at superficial charm will most likely fall flat, while their lack of deep integrity and engagement will be blatantly obvious to you - but they'll probably be assuming the very opposite! So it's quite easy to figure out what they're going for and anticipate their moves.)

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#158

Post by bananamerica » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

So now there’s real proof that my limp dick did not turn me into an asshole.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#159

Post by friendlybus » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 6:52 AM UTC

_hngt wrote: post #19

daenz wrote: post #4

>Prior to this work, the strongest evidence for a link between testosterone exposure and reduced cognitive empathy came in 2011 in a study that found administering testosterone to healthy women reduced their performance on a test of reading emotions. The results suggested the testosterone impaired their performance. That's interesting. Adult males typically have 7-8 times the levels that females do, and females are m…

Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they…

There was a really nice video that supports your point on youtube back in 2013. A lady scientist was doing a talk in a small european country about gender in rats. She found she could get male rats to 'present' and female rats to mount if she messed with 3 distinct moments of hormonal gender influence. One in the womb, one as a young child and one point at puberty. She went on to describe how male rats prefer risky behaviour because they beeline for cheese in the middle of a pool of water on an island and how female rats are more risk averse and swim around the outside edge first.

I have found it impossible to find that video anymore. I don't know why we have to rely on questionable studies when there has been much better work been done and now black-holed.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#160

Post by PeterStuer » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

lanstin wrote: post #148

djsumdog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what's being suggested at here at all. In the past few years, there has been an overemphasis on "maleness" being bad and leading to negative. In a lot of western social history (and even a lot of eastern societies) there has always been the concept of "the divine feminine" (Mother earth, goddesses and so fourth). We've seen the growing emphasis of bad men and toxic masculinity; as if the man has…

Toxic masculinity isn't "being masculine is bad" it's "being so caught up in social stereotypes of supposed masculinity that you become bad." Toxic masculinity vs. healthy masculinity. At least in people that use the phrase seriously that I've interacted with conversationally. Not to dispute that some people think maleness is inherently bad (or that the supposed duality of gender reflects a supposed duality of morali…

Unfortunately the latter part of your comment, the part that you ascribe to 'simplistic thinkers', seems to be more canon these days rather than the more nuanced former part of the comment.