Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance

Parent Cafe
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<p>Adding fuel to the fire of the nature vs nurture debate:</p>

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<p>More on the story at:</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>It was true for me…</p>

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<p>Ive never heard of that-but D did send me a link to this study
<a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/695142.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/695142.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Next they will be predicting if you are going to have a boy or a girl by how they lie in utero ;)</p>

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<p>Hmmm, emeraldkity, wouldn’t this mean there is an additional correlation between SAT scores and sexual orientation??</p>

<p>Maybe there should be a study to consider toe length as well…</p>

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<p>Longer ring fingers on both my hands and higher math scores all around on SAT, GRE etc but I much prefer Language Arts and always did better grade wise in that area over maths. Never could figure it out. Didn’t know it had to do with fingers. :)</p>

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<p>Too bad I have equal ring and index fingers. Does that mean I’ll fail? :D</p>

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<p>So where do we go to rearrange our kids’ finger lengths?</p>

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<p>jmmom – we send 'em to finger-length prep classes, of course!</p>

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<p>This is called the 2D:4D Ratio and is claimed to account for all kinds of things. But overwhelmingly, females have a longer index finger and males have a longer ring finger. So there are those who claim that a male with a longer index finger (2nd Digit) may have a higher probability of being homosexual (and vice-versa for females).</p>

<p>So much of the differences then are gender-based. Females tend to do better on verbal tests, males better on math tests.</p>

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<p>Hmm, my ring finger sure looks longer than my index finger, and yet I scored better on the verbal. PISH, I say!</p>

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<p>Just a bunch of pseudoscientific garbage – finger ratio is primarily genetic – see my cross post here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=4186871#post4186871[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=4186871#post4186871&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>New headline: Students Give SAT the Finger!</p>

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Thanks for making me laugh out loud!</p>

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<p>Did not read links… but I know ring finger being longer relative to index finger = more testosterone exposure in utero. Hormones do influence brain development. Higher T tends to correlate with better spatial skills (so, geometry?). Females can have higher/lower T exposure too. If you have a fraternal boy twin you will have more T exposure.</p>

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<p>SBMom – please DO read the links (please see my cross-post at #11 above) – I cited to some extensive studies, it’s genetic – which is why my hands look like my son’s and brother’s, and why my math-challenged daughter also has the same familial characteristic, long tapering fingers, with the ring finger noticeably longer than the index finger. The genes came from my mom – I remember my brother remarking when she lay on her death bed about what beautiful hands she had. </p>

<p>Anyway, it’s largely determined by genes - androgen exposure may influence the degree of expression, but if the long ring finger gene isn’t there, all the testosterone in the world won’t change things. And the test-score association is just hype for the press release to draw attention to the study – it’s the sort of speculation that has no place in a research journal article.</p>

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<p>I mean, as long as I’m on a rant, event the Yahoo pseudoscience article <a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance&lt;/a&gt; article doesn’t even make sense:</p>

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high testosterone = index finger bigger than ring finger (“longer index finger”)</p>

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low testosterone = index finger bigger than ring finger (“shorter ring finger”)</p>

<p>I figure that whoever wrote the above has their thumb up their you-know-where.</p>

<p>Either that, or my long ring finger must be the reason that I’m smart enough to do the spot the obvious contradiction in the above two statements.</p>

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<p>On which hand? Right or left? What if you are asymmetric?</p>

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<p>Hmmm … my ring & index fingers are the same length … and I did equally well on math & verbal. Does that mean anything?!</p>

<p>I will have to check H’s, D’s & S’s fingers tomorrow! :)</p>

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<p>OK, did some fact checking of the article, and it turns out that the “research” (a) has not been published, (b) did not involved children, (c) did not include any psychometric testing, (d) did not not involve any finger measuring. </p>

<p>Actually, the “researcher” - Mark Brosnan at Bath University, didn’t even leave his campus. He just did a survey of all the profs at the university where he works. See: <a href=“http://staff.bath.ac.uk/pssmjb/blog/index_main.php?page=digit[/url]”>http://staff.bath.ac.uk/pssmjb/blog/index_main.php?page=digit&lt;/a&gt;
He asked them to complete an online questionairre and do a self-assessment of their digit ratio – in other words, his “science” is no better than my posting about my fingers and my kids fingers. </p>

<p>Anyway, based on this standard-less self-assessment, he made this determination:

Note the tiny fractional difference in ratio - 0.01 - on the self-reported data, and also the even smaller differentiation of each group from the mean (.006-.0007). </p>

<p>OK… now that we have gotten a peek at the high level of scientific rigor demanded of faculty at Univ. of Bath, it helps to know that all of this digit ratio stuff is based largely on the work of JT Manning, who has noted that there is considerable geographic and ethnic variation in digit ratio: "Geographic/Ethnic variation in 2D:4D</p>

<p>Manning and colleagues have shown that 2D:4D ratios vary greatly between different ethnic groups (Manning et al 2000, Manning et al 2004). This variation is far larger than the differences between sexes, as Manning puts it “There’s more difference between a Pole and a Finn than a man and a woman.” The variation appears to be related to latitude, such that more northerly populations have higher digit ratios. See: <a href=“Digit ratio - Wikipedia”>Digit ratio - Wikipedia;

<p>Hmmm… now where is the Univ. of Bath and where do you suppose most of their faculty comes from? I think what we are seeing is that the mostly white, anglo-saxon male faculty of the Bath engineering department has a virtually imperceptable difference in digit ratio when they self report than the somewhat less male-dominated faculty of other departments. Fortunately, we know from Manning’s work that the mean digit ratio in England happens to hover around .98, whereas the mean digit ratio for, say, Zulu, is around the .95 mark, whereas in Poland it’s well above .99. See: <a href=“http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/papers/Hurd_andVA07.pdf[/url]”>http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/papers/Hurd_andVA07.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also, it is interesting to note from Manning’s work that the whereas male/female difference in means appears to be <0.01 in Engand or Zulu, in California there is a whopping big difference, something >0.015, with males under .95 and females well above .96 . But hey, we’re all gay out here anyway, right? Or maybe we Californians are just more ethnically diverse? Texans have an even bigger male/female spread, close to .02, with males <.96 and females at ~.975 – and we know that they are all heterosexual and red-blooded and red-stated… and then look at the Australians! They range from ~.965 for the males to >.98 for the females… so Australian females almost catch up to those effete English males. </p>

<p>According to wikipidia, “Digit ratio research often meets with a considerable degree of skepticism due to the obvious parallels to palmistry, phrenology and other discredited traditions within the field of anthropometry.” <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Guess what I think? I’m guessing I’m about a 0.96 female, in California by way of Texas, with ancestry from the same part of the world as those even-fingered Poles. Might as well guess, that’s all Brosnan asked of his survey participants…though I have a hunch that those folks in the engineering department would have been more likely to take a measurement and use a calculator. </p>

<p>Hmm, I’m wondering if anyone has explored a Vitamin D/Sunshine exposure possibility? I was gestated in Texas in a town that has bright sunshine about 350 days of the year.</p>

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<p>Great post, Calmom. I’m always skeptical of Yahoo’s “science” articles, as they’re written in such a simple, non-scientific way that you can’t analyze the validity of the study. I want cold hard numbers, not sensationalist headlines.</p>