Note: This workshop was jointly held with Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences, Hokkaido University.

Speaker: Prof. Kenya Kura (Department of Economics and Information, Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University)

Title: Testosterone and risk preference: Does the concentration change matter? .

Date:November 5, 2010 (Friday) 15:00～16:30

Location: Hokkaido University, Faculty of Letters, room E204

Participants: Toshio Yamagishi, Satomi Higuchi, Motoko Kosugi, Nobuhiro Mifune, Joanna Schug, and others (total 20 participants)

Content: 
We examined the relationships among testosterone level, risk preference, time discounting, choice in the beauty contest game, and the amount of money in the dictator game in female college students over three weeks. For the measure of risk preference, we used two types of tasks (i.e., choice task and matching task). Furthremore, we examined if decreasing in the testostrone level by the administration of glucose would have a effect on the risk preference. The results show that the baseline level of testosterone was not related to the risk preferences in both two tasks. Also, the rapid change in testosterone level by administrating glucouse had a significant positive correlation with the risk preference in the matching task significantly, but it didn’t reach a significant correlation with the risk preference in the choice task. These results imply that the change in testosterone level would have aan effect on the decision-making involved with the uncertainty, but not on the decition-making involved with the risk.