Could We Blame the Financial Crisis on Too Much Testosterone? Harvard Researchers Say Yes

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Could We Blame the Financial Crisis on Too Much Testosterone? Harvard Researchers Say Yes

By Shannon Rupp, The Tyee. Posted October 20, 2008.

Men who trade on an appearance of strength are actually the guys who, in evolutionary terms, have outlived their usefulness.



When it comes to determining how much of a financial risk-taker a man is, don't look him in the eye, look him in the jaw. Is your financial planner a ringer for Arnold? Does he have a jaw like Viggo?

On further examination, does he have a heavy or "low" brow like Moe, on the Simpsons? Throw in thin lips a la Bruce Willis and as the relatively full-lipped Robert Preston sang, "Ya got Trouble."

Ignore those innocent baby blues: a man's attitude to risk is bred in the bone, which reflects how much testosterone courses through his body. The more he has, the more likely he is to take risks with his money. Or yours.

Or so Harvard researchers report in the science journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Economist Anna Dreber and anthropologist Coren Apicella theorize that Wall Street's red-suspendered boys -- or as I think of them, the greedy architects of the new recession -- can't help themselves because they have more testosterone than average, which makes them take big risks to earn big prizes. That's an advantage when chasing woolly mammoths with wooden spears, but it's likely to cause problems in money management.

The scientific findings

Apparently, the rules for rational investing can't counter that evolutionary urge to risk it all on a death-defying feat (with your RRSP). To determine this, the study tested the hormone levels of 100 young men and then gave them $250 and told them they could keep it, invest part of it, or invest it all -- on a coin toss. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/103502/could_we_blame_the_financial_crisis_on_too_much_testosterone_harvard_researchers_say_yes/

[zelta gaisma]

1. can you say eugenics , i knew you could

didn't the world do this before? over and over and over...and prove it was a steaming pile of SHIT?

[Demeter]

2. I'd Look Into the Family Finances and Work History

Did this candidate ever sweat for a living? Overcome a handicap--physical, mental, emotional, financial, health, or familial? Get an education, as opposed to sitting on his ass drinking and drugging or f***? Is he a registered Republican?