4 ms·

Why is “marriage rate” a factor in determining “life success”?

tofof 8y ago
The researchers never once use the term 'life success'. [1] That a behavioral difference (marriage rate) seems to be influenced, in females, by in-utero exposure to testosterone (independent of any effect on fertility rate, at that) is certainly a scientifically relevant finding. Links between psychology and biology are still infrequent. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/14/1812786116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/14/1812786116
- codeisawesome 8y ago
  Agree. But it was listed clustered with “college/school graduation likelihood, wage earnings, fertility (again hmm for this one)” and other indicators which are arguably termable as life success metrics (or any other suitable verbiage).. my point is that “one of these things is not like the others”.
  - tofof 8y ago
    Marriage rate differences have already been shown to be correlated with hormone levels.[1][2] Measuring whether such a difference exists for the level of exposure in-utero simply by having a male twin is interesting. If anything, the natural interpretation of this data would be to expand the range of behavior (marriage rate) considered 'typical' for females. Similarly, fertility differences have been observed already for e.g. mice exposed to different levels of testosterone in utero. The 'freemartin' cows mentioned by another poster here are infertile for a similar reason. Hormones play a huge role developmentally and are almost 100% responsible for morphological sexual anatomy. There's no agenda present in measuring these outcomes. These are exactly the outcomes that would be expected naturally to be different. If anything, the unusual inclusion is the economic and educational factors. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501487/ 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540120/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540120/

The researchers never once use the term 'life success'. [1] That a behavioral difference (marriage rate) seems to be influenced, in females, by in-utero exposure to testosterone (independent of any effect on fertility rate, at that) is certainly a scientifically relevant finding. Links between psychology and biology are still infrequent. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/14/1812786116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/14/1812786116

codeisawesome 8y ago
Agree. But it was listed clustered with “college/school graduation likelihood, wage earnings, fertility (again hmm for this one)” and other indicators which are arguably termable as life success metrics (or any other suitable verbiage).. my point is that “one of these things is not like the others”.
- tofof 8y ago
  Marriage rate differences have already been shown to be correlated with hormone levels.[1][2] Measuring whether such a difference exists for the level of exposure in-utero simply by having a male twin is interesting. If anything, the natural interpretation of this data would be to expand the range of behavior (marriage rate) considered 'typical' for females. Similarly, fertility differences have been observed already for e.g. mice exposed to different levels of testosterone in utero. The 'freemartin' cows mentioned by another poster here are infertile for a similar reason. Hormones play a huge role developmentally and are almost 100% responsible for morphological sexual anatomy. There's no agenda present in measuring these outcomes. These are exactly the outcomes that would be expected naturally to be different. If anything, the unusual inclusion is the economic and educational factors. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501487/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501487/ 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540120/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3540120/