The male hormone, testosterone, stands for aggression and posturing and boosts libido and muscles, however, scientists claim its high levels make men less likely to lie and cheat.
Researchers led by Dr Armin Falk, economist from the University of Bonn demonstrated that the male sex hormone surprisingly also fosters social behaviour.
In the study, subjects who received testosterone clearly lied less frequently than individuals who had only got a placebo.
"Testosterone has always been said to promote aggressive and risky behaviour and posturing," said Dr Bernd Weber, a neuro-scientist at the University of Bonn.
"The disadvantage of many studies is, however, that they only correlate their subjects' testosterone level with their behaviour," said lead author Dr Matthias Wibral.
"For testosterone does not only influence behaviour; behaviour, in turn, also influences hormone levels," said Wibral in a statement.
Scientists recruited a total of 91 healthy men for a behavioural experiment, 46 among them were treated with testosterone by applying it to the skin in gel form.
Researchers checked whether the blood testosterone levels were indeed higher in these subjects than in the placebo group.
The other 45 test subjects only received a placebo gel.
This was followed by the behavioural experiments. The test subjects played a simple game of dice in separate booths. The higher their scores, the higher the amounts of money they received as a reward.
"These experiments were designed such that the test subjects were able to lie," said Weber.
Scientists were able to determine later whether the various test subjects had cheated or not.
Researchers compared the results from the testosterone group to those from the control group.
"This showed that the test subjects with the higher testosterone levels had clearly lied less frequently than untreated test subjects," researchers said.
The study findings are published in the journal 'PLoS ONE'.
