Questa è abbastanza vecchia, però:
Successful Traders: The Testosterone Effect
Its days as a cozy, boozy gentlemen's club may have long passed, but the City,
as London's financial quarter is known, remains a male bastion. As it turns out, that could have more to do with biology than misogyny. In a study by scientists from the University of Cambridge, male City traders who had been exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb were on average six times more profitable than those exposed to low levels of the hormone.
In the research, to be published Jan. 13 in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a U.S. journal, scientists measured 44 male traders' second-to-fourth-digit-length ratio, which is otherwise known as 2D:4D and is an indicator of the effects of prenatal testosterone. The longer a trader's fourth finger relative to his index finger, and therefore the lower the 2D:4D ratio, the greater his prenatal exposure to the hormone. All of those taking part in the study carried out the same type of trading over the 20-month period studied and had the same access to cash and information, and none benefited from underlying client business.
Clearly, that a lower ratio pointed to higher profits speaks to a little more than finger length. Earlier studies indicated that prenatal exposure to testosterone, which spikes between the 9th and 18th weeks of gestation, increases a person's sensitivity to the effects of the hormone much later in life. The greater the exposure as a fetus, in other words, the higher the levels of confidence, vigilance or risk appetite triggered by testosterone in an adult. That observation has already made digit ratio a useful indicator of ability in fields other than finance; 2D:4D has been found to predict success in sports such as soccer, basketball and skiing, for instance.