AUTHOR=Lima de Miranda Katharina , Neyse Levent , Schmidt Ulrich 

TITLE=Risk Preferences and Predictions about Others: No Association with 2D:4D Ratio

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2018

YEAR=2018

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00009

DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00009

ISSN=1662-5153

ABSTRACT=Prenatal androgen exposure affects the brain development of the fetus which may facilitate certain behaviors and decision patterns in the later life. The ratio between the lengths of second and the fourth fingers (2D:4D) is a negative biomarker of the ratio between prenatal androgen and estrogen exposure and men typically have smaller ratios than women. In line with the typical findings suggesting that women are more risk averse than men, several studies have also shown negative relationships between 2D:4D and risk taking although the evidence is not conclusive. The previous studies also reported that both men and women believe that women are more risk averse than men. In the current study, we re-test the relationship between 2D:4D and risk preferences in a German student sample and also investigate whether the 2D:4D ratio is associated with people’s perceptions about others’ risk preferences. Following an incentivized risk elicitation task, we asked all participants’ predictions about i) others’ responses (without sex specification), ii) men’s responses and iii) women’s responses; then measured their 2D:4D ratios. In line with the previous findings, the female participants in our sample were more risk averse. While both men and women underestimated other participants’ (not sex-specific) and women’s risky decisions on average, their predictions were accurate about men. We also found evidence for the false consensus effect as risky choices are positively correlated with the predictions about other participants’ risky choices. 2D:4D ratio was not directly associated neither with risk preferences nor the predictions of the participants. An unpredicted finding was that women with intermediate levels of 2D:4D estimated significantly larger sex differences in participants’ decisions. Yet, this finding needs further testing in future studies.