A preliminary investigation of the associations between personality, cognitive ability and digit ratio

The ratio between second and fourth digit lengths (digit ratio) is known to be sexually dimorphic, with males having lower values. It is believed that digit ratio acts as a marker of pre-natal testosterone exposure and a number of studies of its correlates support this idea. In the present study, associations between digit ratio and a number of cognitive and personality tests which are known to show male–female score differences were investigated. Evidence for associations in the expected direction was found for sensation seeking, psychoticism and neuroticism, in all cases for females only. No association was found between digit ratio and cognitive test scores.