This is pretty wild.

A new study (via Steven Levitt) says the relative length of someone's ring and index fingers predicts whether that person will score better on the math or verbal section of the SAT.  Someone with a longer ring finger is likely to have better math and spatial skills than verbal skills.  Someone with a longer index finger is likely to be more verbal.  There's apparently a biological reason why this should be true.  People with longer ring fingers were exposed to more testerone in the womb, while people with longer index fingers were exposed to more estrogen.  Exposure to different hormones causes the brain to develop differently.

This is consistent with the three-person sample in my household.  My wife's index finger is much longer than her ring finger, and she is much more verbal than mathematical.  My ring finger is much longer than my index finger, and I'm probably more mathematical than verbal.  (I always got higher scores on the math sections of the SAT and GRE, although the math and verbal percentiles were usually the same.  Oh, and I spent three years in math grad school.)  My 16-month-old has a longer ring than index finger.  He's been kind of slow to talk, but he was trying to assemble his nebulizer at one year.

Just out of curiosity, do this blog's readers mainly have long index fingers  or long ring fingers?

Comments

[Jonathan Horak]

Longer index than ring finger here; and I'm definitely better with verbal than with math.

[saulpanzer]

Longer ring than index finger (markedly so), but my verbal skills far outstrip my mathematical abilities.

[Jeff Wood]

My index finger is much longer than my ring finger but I'm very spacial and have a nack for maps and knowing where i am in space. But I'm definitely not very mathematical. I can do it but it's not my favorite.

[DSK]

My ring finger is longer than my index finger. I did do slightly better on my math SATs (this was the early-90s version) than verbal. But, to be fair, I did very well on both, so I'm not sure how statisically useful I am as a data point.
My wife's index finger is longer than her ring finger, but she is definitely better at math than verbal.