Testosterone administration to women increases personal space size

Masson, C., van der Westhuizen, D., Noel, JP. etal. testosterone administration to women increases personal space size. EXP Brain Res 239, 1639-1649 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-021-06080-1

Commentary

Personal space (PPS) is the space that directly surrounds the body and is conceptualized as the sensory and motor interface between the body and the environment.

The size of the PPS varies from individual to individual and situation to situation, and there are characteristics, conditions, and social factors that play a decisive role in the size of the PPS.

Testosterone, a human hormone, plays an important role in the regulation of socially motivated behavior and is known to enhance dominance motivation in implicit and unconscious ways.

We investigated whether this dominance-enhancing effect of testosterone is reflected as changes in the representation of PPS in a within-subjects testosterone administration study in women (N = 19).

Participants performed a visual and tactile integration task in a mixed reality setup.

The results showed that testosterone administration significantly expanded the participants' PPS, suggesting that testosterone caused the participants to implicitly allocate more space.

This finding suggests that the dominance-enhancing effects of testosterone are reflected in the level of sensory-motor processing of PPS.