Testosterone Levels, Top Dogs, and Collective Group Confidence

My favorite behavioral science website, BPS Research Digest, posted a summary of an amazingly weird and rather troubling psychological experiment.  The upshot is that people --- both men and women --- vary in testosterone levels and (no surprise), when people with high testosterone levels aren't in leadership positions, "they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave."  A bit more surprising is that the reverse is true as well, that "people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of authority." The main finding from the research is that when groups suffer from "mismatch" between status and testosterone levels (where those with high testosterone levels are placed at the bottom of the pecking order, and those with low levels are placed at the top), the group has less confidence in its abilities get things done.  I quote from the BPS summary:

Michael Zyphur and colleagues assigned 92 groups of between 4 and 7 undergrads to an on-going task that involved meeting twice a week for 12 weeks, and included creating a professional management-training video. Six weeks into the project the researches measured the participants' testosterone levels via saliva samples. They also asked all members in each group to vote on each others' status. Then six weeks after that, at the end of the project, the researchers measured each group's collective efficacy by summing members' confidence in their group's ability to succeed.

The key finding was that groups made up of members whose status was out of synch with their testosterone level tended to have the lowest collective efficacy. The researchers think that testosterone-status mismatch within a group probably has a detrimental effect on that group's collective confidence. However, another possibility, which they acknowledge, is that a lack of group confidence leads to a mismatch between testosterone levels and status among group members.

The implication is fairly horrifying --- perhaps companies will start using testosterone levels to make decisions about whether or not to put people in leadership positions.  Even if it is "evidence-based" (although these results are preliminary), the thought makes me a bit sick. 

Here is the reference:

Zyphur, M., Narayanan, J., Koh, G., & Koh, D. (2009). Testosterone–status mismatch lowers collective efficacy in groups: Evidence from a slope-as-predictor multilevel structural equation model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110 (2), 70-79.

Comments

[Personaldestroy]

Whereas Drive,bill prevent inside itself strategy award OK So this is SPAM but it is weirdly poetic.

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[David Bourbon]

Jared, in the first case you get the US House of Representatives. In the second case you get the Marines. Now decide which group accomplishes more.

[T Sarkka]

Testosterone levels vary through time and between people. I just saw a documentary of testosterone levels and the effects on behavior of people and of animals. I think the study was wrong when it measured the levels only twice (?). The levels must be dependent on time and on the situation/status in the social group.The alpha male/female tends to have higher levels than the subordinates. There is always a competition going on, who is going to lead.
However, maybe the study shows that if you start with a group all with high testosterone levels, you are heading for trouble: the group won't work until the dust settles down.
Testosterone increases your self confidence, but maybe not on others. The mortality of teenage boys increases with the level of testosterone,high levels make us to do some stupid things, take unnecessary risks etc.

[Bob sutton]

Bill,

That is the scary part....

Bob

[Bill Bennett]

Let's assume the research is sound.

Doesn't this imply there needs to be higher proportion of high testosterone positions for an organisation to function efficiently?

[Bob Sutton]

Jared and John,

You guys are likely both right in that the design is oversimplified and that testosterone are variable. In the light of those observations, it is interesting to ask why OBHDP -- which has exacting peer review standards -- published the paper. Certainly, it is interesting, and that counts. But the oversimplification probably was not seen as a fatal flaw because, to tease-out effects in research, this is almost always necessary. Indeed, a potential problem with this study is that it is not a controlled experiment -- the effects reflect the naturally occurring status order -- so the effects of status and testosterone were not controlled

And as for the variability, the authors do acknowledge it, and also -- toward the end of the article -- briefly imply the possibility that the effects occurred because of the impact of group performance on testosterone levels. Indeed, a look at the table in the article indicates that the correlation between testosterone (measured in week 6) and collective efficacy (measured in week 12)is a whopping .65. I frankly can't tell if that was calculated at the group (n=92) or individual level (n=592), but it does raise an alternative argument: that the relationship is muddied by the effects of performance on testosterone levels (as group performance may have been pretty clear by week 6) -- assuming collective efficacy is a reasonable proxy for performance.

But also note this correlation is different than the match/mismatch effect, and it is unclear to me how it may have muddied it, or not. I also wonder if -- given the strength of the effects the authors found -- that if variability John mentioned can be turned on its head and viewed as strength to support the argument that DESPITE the unreliability of the measure, they still got significant effects (as unreliability usually dampens correlations) -- although that strikes me as stretching things too far.

I guess my overall reaction is that the authors were careful not to make excessive claims, there is at least a plausible argument to support their hypotheses about mismatch, and I am glad this study was published so it will motivate future researchers to test the hypothesis in more rigorous studies. But other reviewers may find the flaws you guys identified -- and acknowledged by the authors to be "fatal." The decisions made about whether or not to publish academic articles are often subjective in the end.

That said, thanks for the comments, I think you two guys make good points.

[John Jenkins]

It's not just an over-simplification, it's a bad design. Testosterone levels are variable, so testing each person once in 12 weeks and tying your conclusions to that single test is useless.

[Jared]

Seems like an over simplification. What happens when you have relatively low testosterone people managing people of similar or slightly lower testosterone people?

Likewise what would happen if the high testosterone people managed other high testosterone people.

I would imagine it can be very difficult to manage high testosterone people, but what if a group had none. How effective is a group comprised entirely of relatively low-testosterone people?