Apply liberally? Testosterone gel nudged weak Democrats to the right

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 6, 2026 – Could a person’s politics be influenced by hormones?

A 2025 study suggests the answer may be yes, at least temporarily, and among a narrowly defined group of young men.

Researchers found that a single dose of testosterone weakened Democratic Party affiliation and produced warmer feelings toward Republican presidential candidates among men who already identified only weakly as Democrats.

The study, titled “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats,” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain and Behavior in July 2025.

The experiment involved 136 healthy men with an average age of 22.3. Researchers conducted the study in 2011, when Barack Obama was president and Republicans were choosing a challenger for the 2012 election.

Participants received either a placebo or 100 milligrams of testosterone in a topical gel under double-blind conditions. Researchers measured their hormone levels and asked them to rate the strength of their political affiliation and their feelings toward presidential candidates.

Among weakly affiliated Democrats, testosterone reduced the strength of their Democratic identification by approximately 12% to 13%. Those men also reported feelings toward Republican presidential candidates that were 45% warmer than before treatment.

The treatment had no apparent political movement among strongly committed Democrats, or among self-identified Republicans or independents.

The baseline results were also more complicated than the “low T Democrat” label.

Researchers had hypothesized that Republicans would have higher testosterone than Democrats. The data did not exactly prove that, but rather showed that weakly affiliated Democrats had 19% higher baseline testosterone than strongly affiliated Democrats. In other words, committed Democrat men tended to be Low-T.

That weak-Democrat group may have been especially open to political movement before receiving the hormone.

The experiment had 11 participants identified as Republicans, and the subjects were mostly college-age men.

The authors acknowledged the imbalance in their sample and called for future studies involving older adults as well as women.

Testosterone has been associated with competition and risk-taking, although its behavioral effects are highly dependent upon the individual and the situation.

One hypothesis is that testosterone acts on reward-processing systems in the brain and may make some people more willing to take risks, including the social risk of expressing preferences that depart from their stated party identity.

The finding arrives amid a broader debate about declining testosterone levels among men.

A meta-analysis presented in 2026 combined six longitudinal studies covering 118,593 men in five countries. Researchers estimated that average total testosterone declined 54% between 1972 and 2019, with the decline apparently accelerating after 2000, according to The Guardian.

Scientists pointed to increasing obesity and diabetes as possible contributors. Some also suspect endocrine-disrupting chemicals and other environmental exposures, as well as sedentary lifestyles.

A separate 2012 experiment found that men receiving testosterone reported more honest results in a private dice game, prompting claims that testosterone reduces lying.