Cortisol and Testosterone in Leadership Practice

Abstract

This study sought to discover whether and how biological parameters can predict leadership behavior in the following leadership-related tasks: a face-to-face negotiation (Study 1), an individual problem-solving case (Study 2), and a group-based problem-solving case (Study 3). We replicated previous work by Mehta, Mor, Yap and Prasad in testing the dual-hormone hypothesis related to testosterone increase and cortisol decrease (Study 1), but our findings do not provide evidence to support the dual-hormone hypothesis. In Study 2, we found that high openness was a significant predictor in the individual problem-solving case. The results from Study 3 indicated that higher openness was related to a better score on the group exercise. Our findings did not support the dual-hormone model, and we did not find support for the seller-specific effect reported in Mehta et al. The original study included 64 participants with complete hormone data, while our replicational study involved 114 participants with complete hormone data.

Keywords

• testosterone
• cortisol
• leadership
• negotiation
• decision making