Before birth, everyone knows, exposure to hormones can make a lasting difference. Androgens, including testosterone, help develop what we think of as typically masculine characteristics, like aggression. They also increase the length of the fourth finger compared to the length of the second finger.
In primates, it shows up in the way they conduct their relationships, with baboons and rhesus macaques competitive compared to the less competitive gibbons. Guess which has the longer fourth finger?
And what we call the Great Apes exhibit more male cooperation and tolerate each other without so much competition. Different ratio of second finger to fourth, this time with the second the longer one.
Not to dismay anyone interested in math or literacy, but a ratio has also been demonstrated when a group of elementary school kids in Great Britain measured up. In a study in the British Journal of Psychology, the length of what they refer to as the index and ring fingers matters.
"Testosterone has been argued to promote development of the areas of the brain which are often associated with spatial and mathematical skills," said Dr. Mark Brosnan, Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, who led the study.
"Oestrogen is thought to do the same in the areas of the brain which are often associated with verbal ability. Interestingly, these hormones are also thought have a say in the relative lengths of our index and ring fingers.” Brosnan was quoted on Science Daily online.
And there may be some natural selection taking place in adults based on this. In 2010, a study in Buffalo’s neighbor to the North, Concordia University in Montreal, showed that “those men who had a lower ratio of length of index finger to the other four had reported a greater tendency toward behaviors that showed risk-taking. A second measurement comparing just the second and fourth fingers was used to confirm that assessment."
Their study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, demonstrates that risk-taking is demonstrated by the length of the second and fourth fingers. The reason is high levels of testosterone prior to birth.
Quoted in a Science Daily report online on November 9, 2010, senior researcher Gad Saad said that risk-taking and high testosterone are associated in male humans with their recreational, social, and financial areas of behavior. Saad is Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption along with his professorship in the John Molson School of Business.
Not only were these associations seen only in the men surveyed, but they also may be a mating signal used by males only, Professor Saad said.”
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