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Correlation Between Finger Length and Aggression/Success/Homosexuality

I came across an interesting article on BBC (Finger length 'key to aggression') today and The Economist has a similar article (Neuroeconomics: Digitally enhanced).

They report a positive correlation between the length of mens' ring fingers and their success in high-stress securities trading. Actually, the more correct comparison s between the ratio of the ring to index finger and success/aggression. In women, the ring and index fingers are comparable, however the ring finger is significantly longer than the index finger in men. In this study, the researchers only looked at men's fingers.

Apparently the level of testerone in a fetus is exposed to during pregnancy affects length of fingers as well as the level of aggression. More aggressive traders tend to have longer ring fingers and they happen to be more successful, after factoring out the effect of experience. They also reached a similar conclusion when looking at college students. Having a short ring finger, it appears is a curse! Another study found that men with short ring fingers were more likely to have heartattacks in early adulthood.

The idea that length of fingers is predetermined in the womb and the fact that ratio of the index(2D) to ring(4D) fingers is different between women and men has been used to study biological basis for sexual orientation, according to this study. The graph below demonstrates their findings.

The 2D:4D increases in the following order for the right hand: hetero men > homo men > homo women > hetero women.
The pattern is pretty much the same for the left hand, with a small disruption.
While I must admit I have been totally ignorant about the subject of biological factors determining sexual orientation, this is a simple and clear indication that there is a link.

The sample size of 720 in this study looks reasonable. But the size of the actual variation in finger lengths appears very small for me.
For example, if index finger is 3 in (7.62cm) long, the difference between a feminine (0.95) and masculine(0.97) ring finger is a mere 2mm. Are the researchers precise enough to measure differnces much smaller than 2mm? I hope so.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting enough study to blog about. I shall spend the rest of my life staring at my fingers and that of others to see if I can get an insight into their personality(and homosexuality).
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