"Female Intuition" is Influenced by Testosterone

How much a woman intuitively thinks may be dependent on how much testosterone she is exposed to while in the womb of her mother, researchers suggest in a recent study.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, details how researcher determined that the more prenatal exposure to testosterone women receive in the womb, the less likely they are to make intuitive decisions, relying on conscious analysis instead.

According to the authors of the study, intuitive though is best described as a decision-making process that involves a great deal of unconscious automation. When a woman appears to make the correct choice with hardly any thought at all, people will often chalk it up as "female intuition."

Researchers from the University of Granada in Spain, the Barcelona Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, and the Middlesex University of London in the United Kingdom wondered why it is that women appear to make "intuitive" choices far more frequently than men in the first place.

According to the authors of the study, previous studies had revealed that testosterone may actually influence how a brain develops, potential influencing behaviors commonly associated with testosterone such as aggression and risky behavior.

With this in mind, the researchers theorized that testosterone may determine how the brain develops to make decisions as well.

According to the study, researchers asked 623 university  student participants to answer a series of questionnaires. One of those questionnaires contained questions that were designed to warrant incorrect intuitive responses. These questions, according to the study, helped the research team measure each participant's ability to override the urge to give an intuitive response -- as further reflection would eventually lead to a correct answer.

In accordance with the researcher's predictions, male subjects consistently scored better on the reflective questionnaire. However, women who showed signed of having been exposed to higher levels of testosterone prenatally also scored markedly higher than women prenatally exposed to lower levels of testosterone. These results help support the theory that testosterone sculpts the brain in such a way that suppresses intuitive thought.

The study was published in the May issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology.