People tend to attribute some significance to their fingers, making assumptions about one’s occupation and strength based on them. Researches such as Bailey and Hurd (2005) claim that finger length does matter, determining whether one is “more masculine” and inclined to do sports due to small index/ring finger ratio, or 2D:4D (215). It is especially sensitive despite the fact that other ratios also display sexual dimorphism, being responsible for several traits with medical implications (Jeevanandam & Muthu, 2016). This research paper tested the hypothesis about men having a longer ring finger compared to the index one and the reverse being true for women.
Method
In order to test the hypothesis, the necessary data regarding finger length was collected from a sample of 12 participants, with 6 people for both sexes. The participants had their fingers measured from the basal crease to the tip using the Vernier scale (Agnihotri, Jowaheer, & Soodeen-Lalloo, 2015). Afterward, the individual ratios were calculated by dividing the index finger value by the ring finger one, and the average for each sex was also determined.
Results
The measurement and calculation results are represented in Table 1, which includes the participants’ name, sex, age, finger length values, and ratio.
Table 1. The measurement and calculation results
The average ratio for the male participants is 0,954, while for the female ones, it is 0,957. The highest and the lowest ratios are 1,054 and 0,923, respectively, and both belong to female participants.
Discussion
The results are inconclusive and cannot fully confirm the hypothesis. All male participants had longer ring fingers, but the same was true for the female ones, except for one whose index finger was longer, fitting the hypothesis. The average ratio values were close for both sexes, with the one for males being slightly lower, which correlates with other studies (Warrington et al., 2018). In conclusion, only the first part of the hypothesis was confirmed, perhaps, due to insufficient sample size.
References
Agnihotri, A. K., Jowaheer, A. A., & Soodeen-Lalloo, A. K. (2015). Sexual dimorphism in finger length ratios and sex determination – A study in Indo-Mauritian population. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 35, 45–50. Web.
Bailey, A. A., & Hurd, P. L. (2005). Finger length ratio (2D:4D) correlates with physical aggression in men but not in women. Biological Psychology, 68(3), 215–222. Web.
Jeevanandam, S., & Muthu, P. K. (2016). 2D:4D ratio and its implications in medicine. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, 10(12), 1–3. Web.
Warrington, N. M., Shevroja, E., Hemani, G., Hysi, P. G., Jiang, Y., … Auton, A. (2018). Genome-wide association study identifies nine novel loci for 2D:4D finger ratio, a putative retrospective biomarker of testosterone exposure in utero. Human Molecular Genetics, 27(11), 2025–2038. Web.