Guess what corrupts men? High levels of testosterone, says study

Okay Aam Aadmi Party, listen up. While you have been aiming that jhadoo at BJP, Congress and the ilk, the roots of corruption lie elsewhere. According to a study, high levels of testosterone leads to corruption. Daily Mail reports, “Researchers in Switzerland also found that human beings may be naturally predisposed to corruption – even those who are honest – in their study for the Leadership Quarterly. The behaviourologists – all based at the University of Lausanne – initially set out to discover the truth behind John Dalberg-Acton’s famous saying that ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. [caption id=“attachment_2273252” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A testosterone test being conducted. Representational image. AFP.[/caption] The team then selected 718 business students to take part in the study. The researchers divided the students  in groups of ’leaders’ and ‘followers’ and made them play a variation of the ‘dictator game’. WikiBooks defines the ‘dictator game’ as follows: “The Dictator Game is an economic game that is designed to question the standard economic assumption that individuals will act solely out of self-interest. This is done by presenting real-life data of otherwise rational individuals acting in a manner that runs counter to the predictions of economic assumptions.” IBTimes reports, “The students voted on how much money it would be reasonable for the leader to take, before playing the dictator game themselves. The finding indicated, again, that the great power a leader wielded, the more likely he or she was to take an unfair share of the money. But high testosterone levels also made leaders more likely to grab more than their fair share of the money.” The participants’ testosterone levels were measured before the game started. The levels of the hormones were then related to the results of the game, thereby establishing that people who were inclined to corruption had more testosterone in their blood. The details of the game have been documented here. Though the study has grabbed eyeballs now, it had first surfaced last year and was being conducted by University of Lausanne in Switzerland. John Antonakis, who had led the research, later said, “Even those who have honest and socially-acceptable attitudes at the moment of their accession to a position of leadership rather easily changed their moral perspectives once they got a taste of power.” Given how the Delhi government is desperate to clean up corruption in the bureaucracy, maybe they should get the testosterone levels of the babus checked?