Slashdot Mirror
Estrogen Linked to Research and Programming Skills
Neil Halelamien writes "Psychologists at the University of Bath have found that male researchers and programmers tend to have higher levels of estrogen, a hormone which promotes development of the right side of the brain (responsible for spatial and analytical skills). Increased estrogen was also linked to having longer index fingers and a decreased likelihood of having children. Men teaching mathematics and physics tended to have unusually long index fingers, while women in the social sciences tended to have more testosterone. The psychologists also found that male and female students with a smaller difference between their index and ring finger lengths tended to do better on their Java programming exams. The research leaves open the question of why women (who typically have more estrogen than men) aren't more prevalent in the science and technology fields."
While I cannot say I have met a large enough sample size to distinguish between women and men, I have met lots of people who had great difficulties "getting" CS concepts. (And also certain theoretical math and physics) I would often understand the concept after just hearing the overview, while these people would have to be explained all the details to really understand what is happening.
I believe the problem is spatial orientation. Certain people can create an accurate representation in their minds, and thus can easily "see" the changes happening. In the article I linked to, they give an example of rotating a complex shape in three-dimensional space. Obviously certain concepts in CS (data structures, for instance) involve making a mental picture to understand what's happening, since you can't exactly touch the data.
What I find interesting is how the theory mentioned in this article compares with this theory. According to the article above, only humans with very high or very low levels of testosterone enables humans to think spatially.
In the article I linked to (and many others), there is a theory that men traditionally developped this skill so that they could map out where lunch was, track it and hunt it down, and how they would need to get back home once they had killed it. This is compared to the women, who would stay near home and 'gather' small berries which required more of a sharp eye.
So my question is now, is did these early humans (which obviously must have needed good spatial abiliity) have high or low testosterone? And where are the high-testosterone guys that should be exceeding at spatial orientation now?