‘Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.’ —D.H. Lawrence
Women tend to be better than men at reading other people’s subtle facial cues, especially cues from the eyes. Because of the gender difference in cognitive empathy – the ability to notice and correctly interpret body language – psychobiologists have hypothesized that testosterone levels could play a role in “mind reading” ability, or lack thereof.
A new study in PNAS validates this hypothesis by demonstrating that a dose of testosterone can make women lose some of their cognitive empathy.
