James Brody
October 1st, 2008, 10:54 AM
This is an Evolution & Human Behavior study that made it to Scientific American and to Drudge...I wonder why the attention?
Testosterone and financial risk preferences (2008) Apicella CL, Dreber A, Campbell B, Gray P , Hoffman M, & Little AC. Evolution & Human Behavior. Http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(08)00067-6/abstract
Abstract
"Many human behaviors, from mating to food acquisition and aggressiveness, entail some degree of risk. Testosterone, a steroid hormone, has been implicated in a wide range of such behaviors in men. However, little is known about the specific relationship between testosterone and risk preferences. In this article, we explore the relationship between prenatal and pubertal testosterone exposure, current testosterone, and financial risk preferences in men. Using a sample of 98 men, we find that risk-taking in an investment game with potential for real monetary payoffs correlates positively with salivary testosterone levels and facial masculinity, with the latter being a proxy of pubertal hormone exposure. 2D:4D, which has been proposed as a proxy for prenatal hormone exposure, did not correlate significantly with risk preferences. Although this is a study of association, the results may shed light on biological determinants of risk preferences."
See also Rowe, D. (2002) Biology and Crime. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, for research suggesting that testosterone is most risky in association with lower IQ. Our story is also that males do risky things and, if successful, get access to more females. Further, expect changes in parallel adaptive systems, perhaps spun by genomic imprinting, that work in synchrony with testoterone availability.
See also "Mom who took teens to gang fight denies wrongdoing
Tue Sep 30, 9:44 PM ET
LONG BEACH, Calif. - A California woman accused of driving her teenage son and his friends to confront a rival gang insists she didn't plan for a 13-year-old boy to die in the fight... Daley testified Tuesday she did not know until the next day that Cano was killed and insists she did nothing wrong. She also denied knowing beforehand that Cano had stabbed her son a few months earlier."
More at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081001/ap_on_re_us/gang_mom_1
An interesting piece on Grecian wars and sex ratios:
Reasons to Worry from Antiquity, Michael Cognato, September 30, 2008. Http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2008/09/reasons_to_worry_from_antiquit.html
And finally: Hidden histories
'The Odyssey' and 'The Iliad' are giving up new secrets about the ancient world
By Jonathan Gottschall, the Boston Globe.
September 28, 2008
"...Patterns of violence in Homer are intriguingly consistent with societies on the anthropological record known to have suffered from acute shortages of women. While Homeric men did not take multiple wives, they hoarded and guarded slave women who they treated as their sexual property. These women were mainly captured in raids of neighboring towns, and they appear frequently in Homer. In the poems, Odysseus is mentioned as having 50 slave women, and it is slave women who bear most of King Priam's 62 children. For every slave woman working a rich man's loom and sharing his bed, some less fortunate or formidable man lacks a wife...."
More at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/28/hidden_histories/?page=full
Testosterone and financial risk preferences (2008) Apicella CL, Dreber A, Campbell B, Gray P , Hoffman M, & Little AC. Evolution & Human Behavior. Http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(08)00067-6/abstract
Abstract
"Many human behaviors, from mating to food acquisition and aggressiveness, entail some degree of risk. Testosterone, a steroid hormone, has been implicated in a wide range of such behaviors in men. However, little is known about the specific relationship between testosterone and risk preferences. In this article, we explore the relationship between prenatal and pubertal testosterone exposure, current testosterone, and financial risk preferences in men. Using a sample of 98 men, we find that risk-taking in an investment game with potential for real monetary payoffs correlates positively with salivary testosterone levels and facial masculinity, with the latter being a proxy of pubertal hormone exposure. 2D:4D, which has been proposed as a proxy for prenatal hormone exposure, did not correlate significantly with risk preferences. Although this is a study of association, the results may shed light on biological determinants of risk preferences."
See also Rowe, D. (2002) Biology and Crime. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, for research suggesting that testosterone is most risky in association with lower IQ. Our story is also that males do risky things and, if successful, get access to more females. Further, expect changes in parallel adaptive systems, perhaps spun by genomic imprinting, that work in synchrony with testoterone availability.
See also "Mom who took teens to gang fight denies wrongdoing
Tue Sep 30, 9:44 PM ET
LONG BEACH, Calif. - A California woman accused of driving her teenage son and his friends to confront a rival gang insists she didn't plan for a 13-year-old boy to die in the fight... Daley testified Tuesday she did not know until the next day that Cano was killed and insists she did nothing wrong. She also denied knowing beforehand that Cano had stabbed her son a few months earlier."
More at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081001/ap_on_re_us/gang_mom_1
An interesting piece on Grecian wars and sex ratios:
Reasons to Worry from Antiquity, Michael Cognato, September 30, 2008. Http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2008/09/reasons_to_worry_from_antiquit.html
And finally: Hidden histories
'The Odyssey' and 'The Iliad' are giving up new secrets about the ancient world
By Jonathan Gottschall, the Boston Globe.
September 28, 2008
"...Patterns of violence in Homer are intriguingly consistent with societies on the anthropological record known to have suffered from acute shortages of women. While Homeric men did not take multiple wives, they hoarded and guarded slave women who they treated as their sexual property. These women were mainly captured in raids of neighboring towns, and they appear frequently in Homer. In the poems, Odysseus is mentioned as having 50 slave women, and it is slave women who bear most of King Priam's 62 children. For every slave woman working a rich man's loom and sharing his bed, some less fortunate or formidable man lacks a wife...."
More at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/28/hidden_histories/?page=full