1 Low testosterone; high empathy

The accepted wisdom about testosterone is often wheeled out as an excuse for patriarchal society.

Ryan knew his patients hadn’t always been so kind. Before being robbed of their testosterone, they might have been personable and adept at small talk, but they weren’t nearly as interested in other people.

He could feel a hypothesis coming on: That as men’s testosterone levels lower, their capacity for empathy will rise.

In his new book, The Virility

Paradox , he argues that “the fact that reducing testosterone in these ageing men may lead to increased empathy, more emotional engagement in relationships and a softening of aggression could be something of a silver lining”.

Ryan started measuring his patients’ “empathy quotients”, using a survey developed for studying autism. It’s too early to release detailed results, he says, but “we do see increases in the empathy scores in many patients on the treatment”.

He also dived into the literature on testosterone, attempting to understand what exactly was happening to them.

Try as he might, however, he found little conclusive evidence for many of the claims made about testosterone, such as a link between hormone levels and risktaking or sexual violence. “There’s so much ambiguity in the science,” he says. Many of the studies had been carried out on disappointingly small numbers of people.

Ryan is one of several researchers who are questioning the accepted wisdom about testosterone. It is often wheeled out as an excuse for patriarchal society, in arguments along the lines of: Women, with their lower testosterone levels, have evolved to nurture and multitask in the domestic sphere, while men are hardwired to take risks, and ensure the future of the species.

But, as Ryan points out, “obviously behaviour and cognition are extraordinarily complex and don’t pivot on one molecule”.