2D:4D Ratio-Here is why Obama is aggressive
2009 January 28
If you combine both logic and aggression to life’s endeavors, success will come knocking at your door.
Accept it or not Barack Obama is one of the most aggressive American president, and there are many other reasons to believe that he will turn out to be a successful president. So why Barack Obama is aggressive, I will now try to explore this with a different point of view and may be many of you will not agree, so I will not make any conclusions in this regard. It has been known for some time that the length of a man’s fingers can reveal how aggressive he is, particularly the ratio of index finger length to ring finger lenght-which is also referred as Finger length ratio (2D:4D) or more simply, the “digit ratio”. Lower the digit ratio, the more aggressive he will be. The 2D:4D ratio can be correlated with any forms of aggression including assertiveness, proactive behavior, verbal aggression, and physical aggression. For a man a low 2D:4D ratio means
- Higher lifetime reproductive success
- More aggressive and assertive
- Highly proactive behavior
2D:4D ratio is also linked with early testosterone exposure although there is considerable uncertainty in this regard. For long time 2D:4D ratio and related measures have been used to understand early biological effects on assertiveness and competitiveness. Let have a close look on President Obama fingers (image below, that is best image I have and if you know a better one then let me know) and try to compare with normal
one (see next image).
For a conclusion in this regard I entrust readers, you are the better judge.
Update: One of reader pointed out that title is suggestive, I must say it is just a curios case of Barack Obama.
References:
- Kobe Millet, Siegfried Dewitte (2009). The presence of aggression cues inverts the relation between digit ratio (2D:4D) and prosocial behaviour in a dictator game British Journal of Psychology, 100 (1), 151-162 DOI: 10.1348/000712608X324359
- A BAILEY, P HURD (2005). Finger length ratio (2D:4D) correlates with physical aggression in men but not in women Biological Psychology, 68 (3), 215-222 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2004.05.001
- Reginia H. Y. Yan, Jessica L. Malisch, Robert M. Hannon, Peter L. Hurd, Theodore Garland (2008). Selective Breeding for a Behavioral Trait Changes Digit Ratio PLoS ONE, 3 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003216
- M MCINTYRE, E BARRETT, R MCDERMOTT, D JOHNSON, J COWDEN, S ROSEN (2007). Finger length ratio (2D:4D) and sex differences in aggression during a simulated war game Personality and Individual Differences, 42 (4), 755-764 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2006.08.009
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Does these characteristics are specific to male, how about women behavior, i don’t think in general women’s are aggressive compared to men
Good obeservation
tiwary you look like trying to prove/state some of the very old known facts of Pamistry through Science, which is good…i would suggest since you belong from the land where this science was originated(kind of) go ahead with reading the old science of palmistry and i am sure you will find many facts already well documented, and it may not be surprising if you find somebody writing a paper out of it and patenting it….:)
My comment goes from the fact that none of your references point to the actual science of palmistry. i guess we should understand that India was once the seat of learning for the entire world. i would like to cite a small example here…Pythagoras theorems oldest statement can be found in Buddhist teachings(a subset/Fragment of Hinduism) which is much much older than when Pythagoras actually gave the Theorem. some time back i also heard that somebody in US Patented Yoga….isn’t that a joke…..
I did my M.Sc in one of the labs involved in this research, so I’m familiar with it; one thing to keep in mind is that though there is a statistically significant relationship between aggression and 2D:4D ratio (though the evidence is at times confusing), the total percentage of variation in aggression in humans explained by 2D:4D is very low, somewhere around 5% if memory serves. Thus, the correlation between 2D:4D and aggression may be robust, but predicting anything about a specific person’s level of aggression using it would be a waste of time.
Also, the whole reason that people research 2D:4D is exactly because of that link between the digit ratio and prenatal testosterone exposure. Prenatal androgen exposure is supposed to have an organizational effect on the brain and is coincidentally thought to affect the expression of hox genes in the fingers (or perhaps it just affects finger bone growth directly). In any case, 2D:4D is used because it’s a way of indirectly measuring something that happened in the womb, where we can’t directly measure the level of androgens that the fetus is being exposed to. (In other species like mice, another commonly used measure is ano-genital distance; I believe that the same relationship for AGD holds in humans, but isn’t measured as often for obvious reasons).
Very correct, that why I did not make any conclusion about any specific person, did I? What ever be the reason Obama will be known for his decisions and for 2D:4D ratio. The post is about how 2D:4D may be correlated with aggression which in itself is not a new topic, much have been said and revealed, I too was involved with one of projects where salivary testosterone level in different individuals was highly correlated with their 2D:4D ration. Although it is very clear that 2D:4D is significant, but not just because initial hormonal exposure in the womb.
I am not sure but they have opposite characteristics or women aggression don’t correlate with 2D:4D ratio
aila i never thought in this way, i must accept your points and next time i will be taking care of this
Studies also show that younger sons, or subsequent sons, show an even lower digit ratio than older sons, and even more curious, is that these younger sons had a higher chance of being homosexual. Based on your theory, the lower the digit, the higher the chance of Obama having homosexual tendancies. Are you sure you want to continue with this point?
Nope, I guess title itself is wrong, thanks for comment
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i totally disagree with this study..
Very very interesting post..I like this one. gotta bookmark this one.
Cheers,
Buat Duit Dengan Blog
I don’t understand what you are talking about because you can’t see his second digit (pointer finger) in the picture. How in the world does the picture help?