Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T21:23:06.917Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and social integration: An effect of prenatal sex hormones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2017

JAROMÍR KOVÁŘÍK ,
PABLO BRAÑAS-GARZA ,
MICHAEL W. DAVIDSON Open the ORCID record for MICHAEL W. DAVIDSON [Opens in a new window] ,
DOTAN A. HAIM ,
SHANNON CARCELLI  and
JAMES H. FOWLER
JAROMÍR KOVÁŘÍK
Affiliation:
University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain and CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of the Charles University in Prague & the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic (e-mail: [email protected])
PABLO BRAÑAS-GARZA
Affiliation:
Economics Department, Middlesex University London, London, UK (e-mail: [email protected])
MICHAEL W. DAVIDSON
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
DOTAN A. HAIM
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
SHANNON CARCELLI
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected])
JAMES H. FOWLER
Affiliation:
Medical Genetics Division and Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The position people occupy in their social and professional networks is related to their social status and has strong effects on their access to social resources. While attainment of particular positions is driven by behavioral traits, many biological factors predispose individuals to certain behaviors and motivations. Prior work on exposure to fetal androgens (measured by second-to-fourth digit ratio, 2D:4D) shows that it correlates with behaviors and traits related to social status, which might make people more socially integrated. However, it also predicts certain anti-social behaviors and disorders associated with lower socialization. We explore whether 2D:4D correlates with network position later in life and find that individuals with low 2D:4D become more central in their social environment. Interestingly, low 2D:4D males are more likely to exhibit high betweenness centrality (they connect separated parts of the social structure), while low 2D:4D females are more likely to exhibit high in-degree centrality (more people name them as friends). These gender-specific differences are reinforced by transitivity (the likelihood that one's friends are also friends with one another): neighbors of low 2D:4D men tend not to know each other; the contrary is observed for low 2D:4D women. Our results suggest that biological predispositions influence the organization of human societies and that exposure to prenatal androgens influences different status seeking behaviors in men and women.

Keywords

social networksdigit ratioprenatal androgenscentralitytransitivity/clusteringgender
Type
Research Article
Information
Network Science , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 476 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, A. A., & Hurd, P. L. (2005a). Finger length ratio (2D: 4D) correlates with physical aggression in men but not in women. Biological Psychology, 68 (3), 215–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, A. A., & Hurd, P. L. (2005b). Depression in men is associated with more feminine finger length ratios. Personality and Individual Differences, 39 (4), 829–836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bala, V., & Goyal, S. (2000). A noncooperative model of network formation. Econometrica, 68 (5), 1181–1229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barabási, A. L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286 (5439), 509–512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S., Knickmeyer, R. C., & Belmonte, M. K. (2005). Sex differences in the brain: Implications for explaining autism. Science, 310 (5749), 819–823.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Booth, A., Johnson, D. R., & Granger, D. A. (1999). Testosterone and men's health. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 22 (1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brañas-Garza, P., Cobo-Reyes, R., Espinosa, M. P., Jiménez, N., Kovářík, J., & Ponti, G. (2010). Altruism and social integration. Games and Economic Behavior, 69 (2), 249–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brañas-Garza, P., Galizzi, M. M., & Nieboer, J. (forthcoming). Experimental and Self-Reported Measures of Risk Taking and Digit Ratio: Evidence from a Large, Systematic Study. International Economic Review.Google Scholar
Brañas-Garza, P., Kovářík, J., & Neyse, L. (2013). Second-to-fourth digit ratio has a non-monotonic impact on altruism. PloS ONE, 8 (4), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breedlove, S., & Hampson, E. (2002) in Behavioral endocrinology, Becker, J., Breedlove, S., Crews, D., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.) (2nd ed.) (pp. 75–114). Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Burt, R. S. (2004). Structural holes and good ideas. American Journal of Sociology, 110 (2), 349–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, R. S., Jannotta, J. E., & Mahoney, J. T. (1998). Personality correlates of structural holes. Social Networks, 20 (1), 63–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carré, J. M., & Olmstead, N. A. (2015). Social neuroendocrinology of human aggression: Examining the role of competition-induced testosterone dynamics. Neuroscience, 286, 171–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carré, J. M., Putnam, S. K. & McCormick, C. M. (2009). Testosterone responses to competition predict future aggressive behaviour at a cost to reward in men. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 34 (4), 561–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, G., & Gneezy, U. (2012). Strong evidence for gender differences in risk taking. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 83 (1), 50–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2014). Friendship and natural selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (Supplement 3), 10796–10801.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coates, J. M., Gurnell, M., & Rustichini, A. (2009). Second-to-fourth digit ratio predicts success among high-frequency financial traders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (2), 623–628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, R. (2009). The sociology of philosophies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Croson, R., & Gneezy, U. (2009). Gender differences in preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 47 (2), 448–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eagly, A. H. (2013). Sex differences in social behavior: A social-role interpretation. London: Psychology Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espinosa, M. P. & Kovářík, J. (2015). Prosocial behavior and gender. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fink, B., Neave, N., & Manning, J. T. (2003). Second to fourth digit ratio, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and waist-to-chest ratio: Their relationships in heterosexual men and women. Annals of Human Biology, 30 (6), 728–738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fowler, J. H., Dawes, C. T., & Christakis, N. A. (2009). Model of genetic variation in human social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (6), 1720–1724.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freeman, L. C. (1977). A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness. Sociometry, 40 (1), 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goy, R. W. & McEwen, B. S. (1979). Sexual differentiation of the brain. Boston: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91 (3), 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78 (6), 360–1380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopp, R. N., de Moraes, J. P., & Jorge, J. (2012). Digit ratio and academic performance in dentistry students. Personality and Individual Differences, 52 (5), 643–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, M. O. (2010). Social and economic networks. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalish, Y., & Robins, G. (2006). Psychological predispositions and network structure: The relationship between individual predispositions, structural holes and network closure. Social Networks, 28 (1), 56–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilduff, L. P., Hopp, R. N., Cook, C. J., Crewther, B. T., & Manning, J. T. (2013). Digit ratio (2D: 4D), aggression, and testosterone in men exposed to an aggressive video stimulus. Evolutionary Psychology, 11 (5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovářík, J., Brañas-Garza, P., Cobo-Reyes, R., Espinosa, M. P., Jiménez, N., & Ponti, G. (2012). Prosocial norms and degree heterogeneity in social networks. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 391 (3), 849–853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovářík, J. & van der Leij, M. J. (2015). Risk aversion and social networks. Review of Network Economics, 13 (2), pp. 121–155.Google Scholar
Lin, N. (1999). Social networks and status attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 25 (1), 467–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutchmaya, S., Baron-Cohen, S., & Raggatt, P. (2002). Foetal testosterone and eye contact in 12-month-old human infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 25 (3), 327–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutchmaya, S., Baron-Cohen, S., Raggatt, P., Knickmeyer, R., & Manning, J. T. (2004). 2nd to 4th digit ratios, fetal testosterone and estradiol. Early Human Development, 77 (1), 23–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manning, J. T. (2002). Digit ratio, Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Manning, J. T., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., & Sanders, G. (2001). The 2nd to 4th digit ratio and autism. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 43 (3), 160–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manning, J. T., & Bundred, P. E. (2000). The ratio of 2nd to 4th digit length: A new predictor of disease predisposition? Medical Hypotheses, 54 (5), 855–857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manning, J. T., & Fink, B. (2008). Digit ratio (2D:4D), dominance, reproductive success, asymmetry, and sociosexuality in the BBC internet study. American Journal of Human Biology, 20 (4), 451–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, J. T., Scutt, D., Wilson, J. & Lewis-Jones, D. I. (1998). The ratio of 2nd to 4th digit length: A predictor of sperm numbers and concentrations of testosterone, luteinizing hormone and oestrogen. Human Reproduction, 13 (11), 3000–3004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manning, J. T., & Taylor, R. P. (2001). Second to fourth digit ratio and male ability in sport: Implications for sexual selection in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22 (1), 61–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophiliy in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27 (1), 415–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milne, E., White, S., Campbell, R., Swettenham, J., Hansen, P., & Ramus, F. (2006). Motion and form coherence detection in autistic spectrum disorder: Relationship to motor control and 2: 4 digit ratio. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36 (2), 225–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Millet, K. (2009). Low second-to-fourth-digit ratio might predict success among high-frequency financial traders because of a higher need for achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (11), pnas-0900396106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newman, M. (2010). Networks: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neyse, L. & Brañas-Garza, P. (2014).Digit ratio measurement guide. Munich Repository Archive, 54134.Google Scholar
Padgett, J. F., & Ansell, C. K. (1993). Robust action and the rise of the medici, 1400–1434. American Journal of Sociology, 98 (6), 1259–1319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, S. N., Kato, B. S., Hunkin, J. L., Vivekanandan, S., & Spector, T. D. (2006). The big finger: The second to fourth digit ratio is a predictor of sporting ability in women. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 40 (12), 981–983.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roney, J. R., & Maestripieri, D. (2004). Relative digit lengths predict men's behavior and attractiveness during social interactions with women. Human Nature, 15 (3), 271–282.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sluming, V. A., & Manning, J. T. (2000). Second to fourth digit ratio in elite musicians. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21 (1), 1–9.Google Scholar
Stanton, S. J., & Schultheiss, O. C. (2009). The hormonal correlates of implicit power motivation. Journal of Research in Personality, 43 (5), 942–949.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tobet, S., & Baum, M. (1987) Role for prenatal estrogen in the development of masculine sexual behavior in the male ferret. Hormonal Behavior, 21 (4), 419–429.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Honk, J., Montoya, E. R., Bos, P. A., Van Vugt, M., & Terburg, D. (2012). New evidence on testosterone and cooperation. Nature, 485 (7399), 4–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Honk, J., Schutter, D. J., Bos, P. A., Kruijt, A. W., Lentjes, E. G., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). Testosterone administration impairs cognitive empathy in women depending on second-to-fourth digit ratio. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (8), 3448–3452.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vega-Redondo, F. (2007). Complex social networks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voracek, M., & Loibl, L. M. (2009). Scientometric analysis and bibliography of digit ratio (2D: 4D) research, 1998–2008. Psychological Reports, 104 (3), 922–956.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watts, D. J., & Strogatz, S. H. (1998). Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature, 393 (6684), 440–442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zaheer, A., & Bell, G. G. (2005). Benefiting from network position: Firm capabilities, structural holes, and performance. Strategic Management Journal, 26 (9), 809–825.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, Z., & Cohn, M. J. (2011). Developmental basis of sexually dimorphic digit ratios. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (39), 16289–16294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Kovářík supplementary material

Kovářík supplementary material

Download Kovářík supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.2 MB