Assignment 2 Option 1 Digit ratio and self-esteem.

Notes to help you with the introduction for the digit ratio practical report
Please note, for assignment 2 you can choose between writing up this report and
another one about how football managers and players account for their successes
and failures. Well introduce the second option in due course. Searching out
information for the digit ratio report might help you to decide which to do.
Remember that the introduction is to put your research in context and make a case
for testing your research prediction. or the digit ratio practical introduction, !d like
you to start by explaining the influence of pre"natal hormones on digit ratio and
how that affects digit ratio in males and females.
#ext, $ia our librarys electronic ser$ices, search out some research papers which
ha$e connected digit ratio with $arious characteristics.
%ake sure you ha$e your user name and password.
rom the &S' homepage select Library and Electronic services from the
(uick links then Academic Search Premier.
)lick it again. *n the next page and you will be asked for your username
and password. !n the search box, put in digit ratio. %any records will appear
and you will need to sift through them. +here are options for refining your
search and you should select academic ,ournals which are peer"re$iewed.
ink and %anning are names that often crop up in digit ratio research. -ou
could also go back to electronic ser$ices and search Pub%ed.
+here are also some good websites and plenty of poor ones. .rticles published in
respectable ,ournals will be fine as will information on academics websites and
uni$ersity websites. +here is a wealth of research connecting digit ratio to physical
characteristics so talk about some of those findings next then mo$e on to links with
psychological characteristics. +ry a key paper by %anning linking /R with fertility,
beha$iour and health. Wikipedia lists respectable papers linking /R with disease,
personality, sporting and cogniti$e ability, sexual orientation, fraternal birth order
and psychological disorders0
http011human"nature.com1nibbs1221manning.html
http011en.wikipedia.org1wiki1/igit3ratio
4! would normally warn against Wikipedia for not being peer"re$iewed but there are
loads of good refernces on this link.5
6nd with the Wade et al 422275 paper 4a$ailable on %iner$a5. +heir study explored
the possibility that differences in digit ratio determined satisfaction with self rated
physical attracti$eness, self"esteem and body esteem. +hey found significant
effects for self"rated physical attracti$eness but that was all. +he results for self"
esteem and body esteem were inconclusi$e. +here are a number of possible
reasons for this. %aybe there is no relationship or maybe there was something
about the sample used by Wade et al. +hey used 82 women but the age range
was wide 49:"7;5. !n our study, the age range will be more tightly controlled 49:"<25
and it will include men. We will also be using correlation rather than di$iding
participants into high and low digit ratio. We will in$estigate whether self esteem
correlates with digit ratio in women and in men. We might expect a positi$e
correlation for women but the background research is less clear about men. !n this
case we might expect a negati$e correlation. Restricting oursel$es to a measure of
self"esteem alone also helps to a$oid ethical difficulties with asking people
personal (uestions about their physical sel$es although it doesnt get us out of
ethical problems completely.