Elsevier

Psychoneuroendocrinology

Volume 81, July 2017, Pages 14-21
Psychoneuroendocrinology

Social status strategy in early adolescent girls: Testosterone and value-based decision making

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.03.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Increases in testosterone predict an increased appetite for social admiration.

  • Risk taking early adolescence is associated with changes in testosterone.

  • Higher testosterone predicted prioritization of social status over financial gain.

Abstract

There has been strong interest, spanning several disciplines, in understanding adolescence as a developmental period of increased risk-taking behavior. Our goals focus on one line of investigation within this larger developmental risk framework. Specifically, we examined levels of pubertal hormones in girls in relation to their willingness to take greater financial risks to gain social status. To this end, we tested the hypothesis that higher levels of testosterone during the ages of pubertal maturation are associated with a greater willingness to sacrifice money for social admiration. Sixty-three girls ages 10–14 (Mage = 12.74) participated in laboratory measures and completed at-home saliva sample collection. The Pubertal Development Scale (PDS) and basal hormone levels (testosterone, estradiol, DHEA) measured pubertal maturation. We made use of a developmentally appropriate version of an Auction Task in which adolescents could take financial risks in order to gain socially motivated outcomes (social status). PDS and testosterone were each associated with overall levels of financial risk taking over the course of the Auction Task. In hierarchical models, PDS and testosterone were predictors of the slope of overbidding over the course of the task. Results provide evidence for the role of testosterone and pubertal maturation in girls’ motivations to engage in costly decision making in order to gain social status. Findings contribute to our understanding of the developmental underpinnings of some interesting aspects of adolescent risk behavior.

Introduction

Puberty – the transition from childhood into adolescence – has been identified as a key maturational window of increased risk taking (Collado et al., 2014, Spielberg et al., 2014). Although several interacting theories seek to explain the ways in which pubertal development contributes to risk behavior, research in this area is in its early stages. One promising perspective highlights the hormonally influenced motivational underpinnings that contribute to the emergence of bold and risky behavior at this time of transition (e.g., Steinberg 2008). In particular, increases in testosterone associated with pubertal development, appear to predict an increased appetite for exciting affective experiences and an increased valuing of social admiration, which may interact with still-developing cognitive control systems in ways that can contribute to risk taking (Braams et al., 2015, Crone and Dahl, 2012).

During this developmental period of increased pubertal hormones, the salience of social status becomes more significant than at any other point in the life course (Gardner and Steinberg, 2005). A range of laboratory tasks, primarily focused on adults, has been used to explore the association between testosterone and deviations from purely rational strategic decision making. In particular, this research has demonstrated that higher testosterone levels in adults are associated with an individual’s likelihood to prioritize increases in social status over increases in financial gain (van den Bos et al., 2013). In fact, the greater the salience of the opportunity to gain social status, the greater the deviations from strategic financial decision making that occur. For adolescents, this finding suggests that increasing social status may become more salient, rewarding, and strategic than prioritizing financial gains.

Neurodevelopmental changes occurring at puberty, including increased levels of gonadal hormones and dopaminergic reorganization, are thought to be strongly related to increases in risk taking in adolescence (Collado et al., 2014, Peper and Dahl, 2013). These hormonal and neural changes influence arousal, motivation, and emotion, resulting in a developmental period of particular vulnerability to sensation seeking and risk-taking behaviors (Forbes and Dahl, 2012).

Although the specific paths through which pubertal changes may affect risk taking have not been delineated, it is known that testosterone significantly influences dopaminergic neural transmission in the adolescent brain (Purves-Tyson et al., 2014, Sinclair et al., 2014). This has contributed to a wide range of theories, often conflicting, about how this development contributes to risk behavior. One hypothesis is that dopaminergic changes in the striatum and prefrontal cortex may increase reward sensitivity (Purves-Tyson et al., 2014, Sinclair et al., 2014). A contrasting hypothesis is that such changes may result in a “reward deficiency syndrome” (Forbes and Dahl, 2010, Steinberg, 2008). Yet another line of investigation has focused on reward prediction errors as underlying these maturational changes (Cohen et al., 2010). Despite uncertainty in the specific mechanisms, these changes appear to increase sensation-seeking propensity and subsequently contribute to greater tendencies toward exploration and risk taking, especially in the presence of peers (Steinberg 2008). Indeed, reward-seeking behavior increases broadly at puberty (Braams et al., 2015, Spielberg et al., 2014) and this type of sensation seeking is tied to risk-taking behavior in children, adolescents, and adults (Chein et al., 2011). Still, despite key advances, the developmental underpinnings of adolescent risk taking associated with hormonal maturation have not been thoroughly explored.

Although a growing body evidence suggests that increased social valuation in adolescence is linked to pubertal maturation, the specific hormonal changes that may underlie this reorientation to peers are not well understood. One proposed mechanism is the pubertal surge in testosterone in both boys and girls, which may amplify the motivational salience of social status and predict behavior that is consistent with the values of a particular context (Braams et al., 2015, Crone and Dahl, 2012). Testosterone predicts motivated dominance behavior in non-human and human primates, including both subtle behaviors (e.g. staring duration) and social forms of aggression (Eisenegger et al., 2011, van Honk et al., 2014). Indeed, testosterone levels correlate with risk taking and dominance in adolescents and adults (Apicella et al., 2014, Peper et al., 2013, van den Bos et al., 2013), and testosterone levels both predict and are modulated by social interactions (Eisenegger et al., 2011). In addition, to maintain high social status, sensitivity to social threat and dominance-challenging events is crucial, and evidence suggests that testosterone or its metabolite estradiol may increase reactivity to such threats (Carré et al., 2014, Eisenegger et al., 2011), possibly by inducing functional orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and amygdala decoupling (van Wingen et al., 2010).

Some evidence suggests that socially motivated behavior tied to testosterone occurs outside of awareness (Terburg et al., 2012) and may affect the relative value of differing behavioral approaches even in the absence of consciously experienced motivational states. Given the importance of social status in adolescence as well as the clear connections between testosterone and socially motivated behavior, the focus herein is on the ways in which pubertal maturation may contribute to an overvaluation of the affective experience of social status at the expense of purely strategic behavior (that maximizes monetary gains).

We address some of the gaps in the adolescent risk-taking literature by directly investigating the developmental underpinnings of risk-taking propensities in girls. The goal is to measure, in a controlled environment, some of the first tendencies toward risk behavior that emerge in early adolescence and may interact with contextual factors to predict real-world risk taking. Specifically, we examine the association between pubertal maturation and socio-affectively motivated behavior, hypothesizing that higher levels of testosterone would be associated with increased willingness to pay (sacrifice financial gain) on the Auction Task, as well as more persistent financial risk-taking over the course of the task, as a reflection of adolescents prioritizing social status over financial gain.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixty-three developmentally normative preadolescent and adolescent girls ages 10–14 (M = 12.74; SD = 1.09), were primarily recruited via IRB-approved advertisements posted on online classified sites and in community centers, libraries, schools, and camps. Because participants also referred friends, snowball sampling was also used. The sample was ethnically diverse (52.4% White; 22.2% Mixed race/ethnicity; 11.1% Black/African American; 7.9% Hispanic/Latino; 4.8% Asian; 1.6% Other). Although

Preliminary analyses

Descriptive information and correlations among all variables of interest and covariates are presented in Table 1. Several variables were considered for inclusion as covariates, including age, race/ethnicity, vocabulary, BMI, use of medication, and multiple measures of sociometric status. Age and vocabulary each emerged as significant predictors in at least some of the primary analyses; these variables were retained as covariates in each of the following analyses. SES Community Ladder (hereafter

Discussion

We examined the relationship between testosterone and willingness to take greater financial risks in exchange for increased social status. After adjusting for covariates, self-reported pubertal development predicted mean overbidding on the Auction Task, as did testosterone. Although popular psychology suggests that testosterone-linked socially motivated behavior is aggressive, testosterone administration in adult women also predicts fair bargaining behavior that increases the efficiency of

Conclusion

We examined the developmental underpinnings of risk-taking tendencies in adolescent girls by examining pubertal contributions to socio-affectively motivated behavior to increase social status at the expense of losing money. These cross-sectional data are consistent with our a priori predictions that individuals with higher testosterone and more advanced pubertal maturation would be associated greater tendency to prioritize status-seeking at the expense of monetary loss. These findings provide

Funding sources

Stephanie Cardoos’s work on this paper was supported by Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award F31DA033716. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

References (50)

  • M.J. van Ryzin et al.

    Family and peer predictors of substance use from early adolescence to early adulthood: an 11-year prospective analysis

    Addict. Behav.

    (2012)
  • G. van Wingen et al.

    Testosterone reduces amygdala-orbitofrontal cortex coupling

    Psychoneuroendocr

    (2010)
  • K.M. Welker et al.

    A comparison of salivary testosterone measurement using immunoassays and tandem mass spectrometry

    Psychoneuroendocr

    (2016)
  • E. Westling et al.

    Pubertal timing and substance use: the effects of gender, parental monitoring and deviant peers

    J. Adolesc. Health

    (2008)
  • C.F. Zink et al.

    Know your place: neural processing of social hierarchy in humans

    Neuron

    (2008)
  • T.M. Achenbach et al.

    Research Center for Children, Youth and Families

    (2001)
  • N.E. Adler et al.

    Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy, white women

    Health Psychol.

    (2000)
  • C.L. Apicella et al.

    Testosterone and economic risk taking: a review

    Adapt. Hum. Behav. Physiol.

    (2014)
  • M.A. Boksem et al.

    Testosterone inhibits trust but promotes reciprocity

    Psychol. Sci.

    (2013)
  • B. Braams et al.

    Longitudinal change in adolescent risk-taking: a comprehensive study of neural responses to rewards, pubertal development, and risk-taking behavior

    J. Neurosci.

    (2015)
  • J.M. Carré et al.

    Testosterone reactivity to provocation mediates the effect of early intervention on aggressive behavior

    Psychol. Sci.

    (2014)
  • N. Castellanos-Ryan et al.

    Pubertal development, personality, and substance use: a 10-year longitudinal study from childhood to adolescence

    J. Abnorm. Psychol.

    (2013)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

    Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2013

    (2014)
  • L.C.M. Centifanti et al.

    Driving under the influence of risky peers: an experimental study of adolescent risk taking

    J. Res. Adolesc.

    (2014)
  • J. Chein et al.

    Peers increase adolescent risk taking by enhancing activity in the brain's reward circuitry

    Dev. Sci.

    (2011)
  • Cited by (30)

    • Social learning across adolescence: A Bayesian neurocognitive perspective

      2022, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
      Citation Excerpt :

      It has been suggested that this increased responsiveness results from the neural maturation of these brain areas (Somerville et al., 2010; Blakemore and Robbins, 2012; Crone and Dahl, 2012; Albert et al., 2013) and changing neurochemical transmission including elevated release of striatal dopamine in response to reward (Galvan, 2010; Luciana et al., 2012). Importantly, studies that index pubertal status by measuring hormone levels have found that gonadal hormone levels correlate with reward-related activity in the ventral striatum (Op De Macks et al., 2011; Braams et al., 2015), connectivity within the social brain network including the temporoparietal junction and the dorsomedial PFC (Klapwijk et al., 2013), and willingness to sacrifice money for social status (Cardoos et al., 2017), suggesting more directly that the adolescent-specific increase in social responsiveness is related to developmental status (Nelson et al., 2005; Blakemore, 2008; Crone and Dahl, 2012). In terms of the Bayesian framework, this would predict that parameters that govern the relative weight of normative influence would play an outsized role in adolescence.

    • Structure-function coupling within the reward network in preschool children predicts executive functioning in later childhood

      2022, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
      Citation Excerpt :

      One key question was whether structural and functional connectivity both independently contributed to reward sensitivity or had overlapping effects. While sex differences in reward processing are well documented (Rand et al., 2016; Soutschek et al., 2017), most studies have focused on adolescents and adults (Braams et al., 2015; Cardoos et al., 2017; Forbes et al., 2010; Laube et al., 2017; Op de Macks et al., 2011). Therefore, we also explored if sex differences in reward processing were observed in children.

    • Food choice in transition: adolescent autonomy, agency, and the food environment

      2022, The Lancet
      Citation Excerpt :

      Simultaneous neurodevelopmental changes influence motivations and behaviours, including dietary patterns. During adolescence, brain remodelling and increased testosterone are associated with heightened sensitivity to social evaluation and influence, increasing the desire for autonomy and motivation for risk-taking to gain social status and recognition.19,26,27 Some studies suggest that reward processing systems, which are remodelled during the adolescent period, might become more sensitive to and increase the appeal of energy-dense foods.28,29

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    1

    S. Cardoos and A. Ballonoff Suleiman contributed equally to this research and the development of this manuscript.

    2

    Present Address: San Francisco VA Medical Center, 4150 Clement St. (116B), San Francisco, CA 94121, USA.

    View full text