Science
Related: About this forumLink between relative lengths of index and ring fingers in men and behavior towards women
Can you judge a man by his fingers? Link between relative lengths of index and ring fingers in men and behavior towards women
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/fkx6Mu4k3HE/150218122110.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
Men with short index fingers and long ring fingers are on average nicer towards women. This phenomenon stems from their fetal life, and the hormones these men have been exposed to in their mother's womb. The findings might help explain why these men have more children.
..
F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Well, that's another data point that is going into DU's giant file, is it not.
I'm the opposite! My index finger is significantly shorter than my ring finger. The middle one is exceptionally long, too.
"here's the church, here's the steeple" so they say.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)Definitely female friendly.
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)Hand with index finger being shorter than the ring finger, resulting in a small 2D:4D ratio, pointing to a high exposure to testosterone in the uterus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio#cite_note-42
MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)My index fingers are longer than my index fingers - I often wondered if it's because I'm mtf trans but looking at the list of things that are on that list some match some don't. Fairly close to 50/50 though. FWIW my wife who is also trans has slightly longer ring fingers than index fingers
"The more this, the more likely that" is utter silliness as it is not really science, as it does not really predict anything on an individual level. Even statistically speaking the correlation is so weak it's basically meaningless. If for example a high 2D:4D person had depression 95% of the time and a low 2D:4D person only had it 2% of the time I think you could draw a relevant conclusion - but it's more like 9.1% and 7.8%. Interesting, but beyond mild interest who cares? It won't tell you by looking at someone's fingers or not whether they have depression or anything else about them with any reasonable degree of accuracy. And of course the most important thing is to treat the people with depression.... not treat the people with high 2D:4D.
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)with not knowing for sure
...
A third focus for future research might be on identifying additional ways to assess the early hormone environment in healthy individuals. The literally hundreds of studies that have been published in the past dozen or so years relating the 2D:4D finger ratio to various behaviors and other characteristics that show sex differences provide evidence of interest in such measures. Unfortunately, studies of 2D:4D have produced inconsistent results, even in large samples. Another approach has been to look at testosterone in amniotic fluid samples, but this approach is limited to women referred for amniocentesis for clinical reasons, so not necessarily representative of the general population. In addition, only one sample of amniotic fluid at a single timepoint, usually uncontrolled for time of day, is available. One report on extreme groups from a large population sample suggests that maternal testosterone during pregnancy might provide a window into the hormone environment of the female fetus [72]. Although maternal hormones appear far from fetal hormones, there appears to be a substantial correlation between the two [46], probably because of genetic relatedness [60;128]. One advantage of maternal samples, either of blood or of saliva, is that they can be obtained repeatedly in the population at large. This potential window into hormones during early development deserves additional attention.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296090/
At least the BBC can do some running experiments with their digit ratio.