Revisiting the Criminological Consequences of Exposure to Fetal Testosterone: A Meta‐analysis of the 2d:4d Digit Ratio*

Abstract

As criminology has become more interdisciplinary in recent years, biosocial criminology has earned a place at the table. Although this perspective comes in many forms, one important proposition has gained increasing attention: that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio—a purported physical biomarker for exposure to fetal testosterone—is related to criminal, aggressive, and risky/impulsive behavior. Strong claims in the literature have been made for this link even though the findings seem to be inconsistent. To establish the empirical status of this relationship, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 660 effect size estimates drawn from 47 studies (14,244 individual cases) indicate a small overall effect size (mean r = .047). Moderator analyses indicate that this effect is rather “general” across methodological specifications—findings that are at odds with theoretical propositions that specify the importance of exposure to fetal testosterone in predicting criminal and analogous behavior later in life. We conclude with a call for exercising caution over embracing the findings from one or two studies and instead highlight the importance of systematically organizing the full body of literature on a topic before making decisions about what does, and what does not, predict criminal and analogous behavior.

Cool and Hot Executive Functions in Relation to Aggression and Testosterone/Cortisol Ratios in Male Prisoners

“…Results from a recent meta-analysis confirm this finding [72]. Even though this method had been used before in similar research [73], there appears to be only a small effect size in the relation between prenatal testosterone exposure and aggression and risk taking later on in life [72,74]. Therefore, future studies could better focus on endogenous than prenatal testosterone levels.…”

“…In contrast to the findings related to endogenous testosterone/cortisol levels, no significant correlations were found for EF or aggression measures and prenatal testosterone exposure, which were determined by measuring the ratio between the index and ring finger length, the so called 2D-4D ratio [52]. Results from a recent meta-analysis confirm this finding [72]. Even though this method had been used before in similar research [73], there appears to be only a small effect size in the relation between prenatal testosterone exposure and aggression and risk taking later on in life [72,74].…”

Impact of Literacy Interventions on Reading Skills in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: A Meta‐Analysis

“…To overcome this limitation, recent meta‐analytic efforts (e.g., Lee, Warschauer, & Lee, in press; McEwan, ; Pratt, Turanovic, & Cullen, ) have used a multilevel modeling approach so that the structures of the data set can be maintained for precise estimation (see Hox, Moerbeek, & van de Schoot, for theoretical background). In this way, we were able to calculate more than one ES for each independent sample when it has more than one measurement; therefore, we computed 14 ESs for two independent samples of Piper and Korda ().…”

It's Hopeless

“…Specifically, we fitted hierarchical models with robust standard errors to adjust for the clustering of effect sizes within studies/datasets (Hedges, Tipton, and Johnson, ; Tipton, ). The meta‐analysis of multiple effect sizes per study is becoming increasingly common in general, and meta‐analyses in criminology and criminal justice are beginning to conduct these types of analyses more frequently (Pratt, Turanovic, and Cullen, ; Pratt, Turanovic, Fox, and Wright, ; Pyrooz, Turanovic, Decker, and Wu, ). We estimated all of our models in Stata 14 using robumeta (Hedberg, ), and we calculated the variance for each effect size estimate using σ 2 = 1/( n – 3) (Lipsey and Wilson, )…”