Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? If so, then you’re more likely to have a promiscuous love life, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Biology Letters, the new study also found that humans can fall into one of two groups: promiscuous or faithful. This is different than most other sexually-reproductive species, which are exclusively one or the other.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers compiled answers from almost 600 North American and British people on a standardized survey approximately social and sexual attitudes. They also looked at measurements of the right index finger compared to the right ring finger from over 1,300 British study volunteers. The team compared these fingers because the shorter the index finger is compared to the ring finger, the greater the levels of testosterone that person is more likely to have been exposed to while growing in the womb. Also, greater amounts of fetal testosterone have been linked to greater sexual promiscuity as an adult. While not predictive of a person’s behavior, finger length can help find out the group of people who are more prone to be promiscuous, the researchers said.
The two groups
Survey responses showed that people fall firmly into two groups: those who are faithful and those who tend to be promiscuous. The researchers saw that this was true for both men and women, with slightly more men falling into the promiscuous than the faithful group.
“We need to collect more data to confirm the possibility that there are more men in the promiscuous group, as these results are still quite preliminary,” said study author Rafael Wlodarski, a psychology researcher at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
The evaluation of the finger lengths likewise learned that men tended to separate into two groups. One group had a ring finger which was considerably longer than the index finger, indicating that they had been exposed to more fetal testosterone and may be more prone to look for many sexual partners. The other group had fingers which were very similar in length, a sign they are more prone to seek long-term relationships.
“This research suggests that there may be two distinct types of individuals within each sex, pursuing different mating strategies,” Wlodarski said. “We observed what appears to be a cluster of males and a cluster of females who are more inclined to ‘stay’, with a separate cluster of males and females being more inclined to ‘stray,’ when it comes to sexual relationships.”
“It is important to note that these differences are very subtle, and are only visible when we look at large groups of people: we cannot really predict who is going to be more or less faithful,” said study author Robin Dunbar, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford. “Human behavior is influenced by many factors, such as the environment and life experience, and what happens in the womb might only have a very minor effect on something as complex as sexual relationships.”
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