Ultimatum Game: Punishment over Payoff

Did you know that giving men extra testosterone can make weakly affiliated Democrats shift conservative? In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down a 2025 study showing testosterone administration caused a “red shift” in political preferences—plus what it reveals about conservatism, declining T levels in modern men, AI attitudes, social vigilance, punishment of bad actors, risk-taking, and why high-testosterone mindsets align with enforcement, competition, and opportunity.

They explore how testosterone isn’t just “rage”—it’s strategic dominance calibration, reduced performative niceness (without killing real benevolence), increased willingness to punish unfairness, and comfort with confrontation and disruption. From immigrant crises and benefit fraud to why low-T societies might fear AI, this conversation reframes conservatism as partly hormonal—and asks whether we should be subsidizing testosterone for the masses.

Featuring kid interruptions, roid rage myths, soul debates, and plenty of Based Camp chaos. If you’re high-T (or want to be), this one’s for you.

Show Notes

In 2025, a group of researchers found that testosterone administration caused democrats to shift in a more conservative direction.

This reveals a lot about conservatism and modern leftists and when I dug deeper into the effects of higher levels of testosterone in both men and women, I feel like I came away with a better understanding of the left, the right, and society in general.

Also, now whenever I hear about people taking testosterone supplementation, I am going to think “they’re just taking their conservative pills”

The Research

In their paper, titled “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats”, these researchers took 136 “healthy males,” measured the strength of their political affiliation and their basal testosterone, gave them synthetic testosterone or a placebo, and then checked to see if their affiliation changed.

They found:

* That more weakly affiliated democrats had 19% higher basal testosterone than those who identified strongly with the party

* That “When weakly affiliated Democrats received additional testosterone, the strength of their party affiliation fell by 12% (p = 0.01), and they reported 45% warmer feelings towards Republican candidates for president (p < 0.001).”

They also found that “Testosterone administration did not affect political preferences for strongly affiliated Democrats or strong or weak Republicans.”

In short, their results demonstrate that testosterone induces a “red shift” among weakly affiliated Democrats, providing evidence that testosterone affects political preferences.

Hmm.. is Testosterone Changing?

Across many industrialized populations, average basal testosterone levels in men appear to be drifting downward over time, while data for women are sparse and less clear but do not show a strong, consistent upward trend.

Just a note:

* Typical female testosterone levels are far lower than male levels (roughly 10–20‑fold lower)

* In both sexes, testosterone naturally declines with age within an individual, with an average drop of about 1% per year in adult men and a gradual decline in women that accelerates around menopause

* So as populations age, their testosterone will drop

In men:

* Several large cohort and lab‑database studies from the U.S., Europe, and Israel report an age‑independent secular decline in total testosterone in men, after adjusting for age and often for BMI and other factors.

* For example, a widely cited Massachusetts study found that men of the same age in the early 2000s had substantially lower mean testosterone than men of the same age in the late 1980s, and this drop was not fully explained by obesity or other measured health and lifestyle changes.

* A large Israeli health‑system analysis (over 100,000 men, 2006–2019) likewise found a significant, prominent decline in testosterone across most age groups, again largely independent of BMI.

* A newer analysis of “healthy” men has also reported progressive decreases in both testosterone and LH over recent decades, suggesting a true change in hypothalamic‑pituitary‑gonadal function rather than just obesity or assay artifacts.

If More Testosterone Correlates with Conservatism, What Might That Say About Conservatism?

In other words, what do increases in testosterone change about views and behavior?

Across lab and real-world studies, higher or experimentally raised testosterone is less “rage hormone” and more “status and dominance calibration”: it pushes behavior in whatever way seems best to gain or protect status in that situation (which can be aggressive, but can also be generous or prosocial).

Key Behavioral Changes

Aggression and conflict response

* Higher testosterone is linked to greater reactive aggression, especially when people feel provoked, treated unfairly, or their status is threatened, rather than indiscriminate hostility.

* In experiments like ultimatum games, testosterone increases costly punishment of unfair offers, even when it doesn’t improve payoff, consistent with defending status or enforcing norms.

Risk-taking and competition

* Elevated testosterone is associated with more willingness to take financial and social risks and to enter competitive situations.

* In trading and lab tasks, higher testosterone correlates with riskier bids and more optimistic expectations about outcomes, mediated by increased confidence rather than simple recklessness.

* Randomized trials show that testosterone can increase willingness to compete, although effects depend on cortisol levels and context (who the opponent is, prior wins/losses).

Trust, vigilance, and social reading

* Single-dose testosterone in women reduced interpersonal trust, particularly in people who are naturally very trusting, interpreted as increased social vigilance for exploitation in competitive environments.

* It tends to put people in a more defensive, “scan for threats/opportunists” mode, which is adaptive for dominance but can strain cooperative relationships if chronic.

* Some studies find impaired cognitive empathy and reduced “strategic” or feigned prosociality under testosterone, meaning people may care less about managing how cooperative they look to others and more about direct payoff or status

* OMG TESTOSTERONE REDUCES PERFORMATIVE NICENESS

BUT IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY REDUCE ACTUAL BENEVOLENCE!!!

Prosocial and status-enhancing behavior

* Importantly, testosterone can also increase generosity when generosity enhances status. In bargaining games, men given testosterone punished unfairness more but were not less generous when offers were high.

* Other work shows testosterone can eliminate strategic prosociality (acting nice just for image) but not genuine prosocial motives, reinforcing the idea that the hormone tunes behavior to real, not performative, status benefits.

Cognitive style and decision-making

* Testosterone administration makes men more likely to go with gut impulses and less likely to engage in cognitive reflection, leading to more errors on trick problems where the intuitive answer is wrong, even though basic math ability is unchanged.

* This seems to operate through increased confidence and reduced self-doubt, which can be an advantage in some leadership/competitive settings but a liability when careful checking is needed.

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Mood and personality correlates

* Observationally, higher testosterone has been linked with traits like dominance, lower punishment sensitivity (less fear of negative consequences), more approach behavior, and in some cases irritability or uncharacteristic aggression, particularly at supraphysiologic doses (e.g., heavy anabolic steroid use).

How this changes views

* Other people: seen a bit more as competitors or potential threats to status, so you may feel less automatically trusting and more scrutinizing of others’ motives.

* Fairness and respect: slights, disrespect, or unfair treatment feel more salient and more worth confronting or punishing, even at personal cost.

* Risk and opportunity: downside risk feels less scary and upside feels more attainable, so risky choices can look more reasonable and attractive.

* Self-view: stronger internal sense of certainty and correctness; more confidence and less second-guessing.

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This explains why Republicans are more comfortable doing things like:

* Enforcing immigration policy

* Enforcing laws

* Supporting capitalism

Episode Transcript

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