Researcher Jack van Honk found that when people were given more testosterone they became less empathic, also a higher utero testosterone level was correlated with a person being more impacted by testosterone pills.
To find out more check the link below.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/02/1011891108.full.pdf
NOS Themes.
Science is based on evidence: The more testosterone that one has, the lower your empathy level is.
Importance of repeatability: 16 different women were used in this study and similar results were found.
I found this to be very interesting and I found another article that talked about the same study. They mentioned that the reason that testosterone levels affect empathy levels is because of "mind reading". They explained that a person's ability to feel empathetic is affected by their ability to infer what a person is feeling or thinking. They said that a person's ability to "mind read" is impacted by their testosterone level.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110209105556.htm
This article is very interesting to me. I found an article that also talks about finer length relating to testosterone levels, and I found that scientists have found that if your ring finger is longer than your index finger, it could increase or decrease your chances of getting certain diseases. Scientists have begun to study what causes this by looking at chemical exposures, diet during pregnancy, and stress levels during pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteLink to Article: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/04-finger-length-ratio-can-predict-aggressive-behavior-and-risk-of-disease
I looked into the "mind reading" concept that Taylor mentioned, and I learned that the scientists ONLY tested females because they have lower testosterone levels than men. Female-only testing maximizes the possibility of seeing the amount of empathy decrease. "Mind-Reading" is one aspect of empathy, that tests how well someone reads other people's facial expressions and then determines their mood.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/extra-testosterone-reduces-your-empathy
I found this really cool so I looked a little further into it and found that testosterone plays a big part in a persons ability to read emotions especially from the eyes. It impair their ability to read facial expressions. This suggests that men’s testosterone levels could be to blame for their increased confusion about what others are thinking/feeling.
ReplyDeletehttp://icanhasscience.com/uncategorized/cant-read-minds-blame-the-testosterone/
They actually have found a link between gender, sexuality, and the lengths of these fingers. In males, the ring finger is longer than the index finger, and in females, they are the same length. This is not always true, however. Homosexuals tend to have the finger length ratios of the opposite gender, so gay men's ring and index fingers would be of the same length.
ReplyDelete