Women, testosterone and finance
女性，睾酮和金融业

Risky business
冒险事业

Aug 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Hormones, not sexism, explain why fewer women than men work in banks

为什么银行从业者中女性远少于男性？性别歧视不是主因，荷尔蒙才是

THAT the risk-taking end of the financial industry is dominated by men is unarguable. But does it discriminate against women merely because they are women? Well, it might. But a piece of research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University, near Chicago, suggests an alternative—that it is not a person’s sex, per se, that is the basis for discrimination, but the level of his or her testosterone. Besides being a sex hormone, testosterone also governs appetite for risk. Control for an individual’s testosterone levels and, at least in America, the perceived sexism vanishes.

不可否认，当今高风险金融业是男人的天下。但女性在这一行业中受到歧视是否仅仅因为她们是女的呢？有可能。但《美国国国家科学院学报》上刚发表的一项由西北大学（地处芝加哥附近）的Paola Sapienza主持的研究提出了不同的看法。这项研究指出，高风险金融业中歧视现象的根源不是性别，而是睾酮水平的高低。睾酮不仅是一种性激素，也决定着人的风险偏好。如果把睾酮水平造成的歧视现象排除在外，那么至少在美国范围内，我们已经看不到明目张胆的性别歧视了。

Dr Sapienza and her colleagues worked with aspiring bankers (MBA students from the University of Chicago). They measured the amount of testosterone in their subjects’ saliva. They also estimated the students’ exposure to the hormone before they were born by measuring the ratios of their index fingers to their ring fingers (a long ring finger indicates high testosterone exposure) and by measuring how accurately they could determine human emotions by observing only people’s eyes, which also correlates with prenatal exposure to testosterone.

Sapienza博士和她的同事们以一些志在进军金融业的芝加哥大学mba学生为对象进行了这项研究。研究者首先测定了被试者唾液中的睾酮水平。同时也借助两个测试估算了他们出生前的睾酮暴露水平——一项是测量被试者食指和无名指的比例（较长的无名指意味着暴露于更高的睾酮水平之下）；另一项是观察被试者通过眼神来察觉他人情绪的能力（这种能力也与被试者出生前的睾酮暴露水平相关）。

The students were then presented with 15 risky choices. In each they had to decide between a 50:50 chance of getting $200 or a gradually increasing sure payout, which ranged from $50 up to $120. (Some of this money was actually paid over at the end of the experiment, to make the consequences real.) The point at which a participant decided to switch from the gamble to the sure thing was reckoned a reasonable approximation of his appetite for risk.

研究者随后让这些学生对15个风险问题进行选择。在每一题中，学生们或者有50%的机会得到200美元，或者可以地得到一笔确定的资金（从50美元开始逐渐增加，最多120美元）。为了保证试验结果的可信性，其中的一些将在试验结束之后才付给学生。这样一来，受试者放弃赌博而转向获得确定收入时的收益水平就反映了他或她的风险偏好。

As the researchers suspected, women and men with the same levels of testosterone generally switched at the same time, demonstrating similar risk preferences. In other words, women who had more testosterone were more risk-loving than women with less, while the data for men at the lower end of the spectrum displayed a similar relationship. Curiously, the relationship between testosterone and risk taking was not as strong for men with moderate to high levels of the stuff, though previous studies have shown this relationship can be significant as well.

与研究者预计的情况相同，具有同等睾酮水平的男性和女性的转换点是一样的，这显示他们具有相同的风险偏好。换句话说，同样是女性，睾酮水平高的就比低的更喜欢冒险，在那些睾酮水平较低的男性中得出了相似的结论。然而有意思的是，对于睾酮水平处于中高级别的男性而言，睾酮浓度和风险偏好之间就不具有如此高的相关性了（虽然以前的研究显示相关性也很高）。

In all cases the correlation was strongest when the salivary measure of testosterone was used, suggesting that it is the here and now, rather than the developmental effects of testosterone on the brain, that is making the difference.

在整个试验过程中，相关性在进行唾液睾酮水平测量时最高。这也显示睾酮的水平直接影响了风险偏好，而不是通过影响大脑来间接发生作用。

The researchers then followed the subjects’ progress after they graduated, to see what sort of careers they entered. As expected, men were more likely than women to choose a risky job in finance. Again, though, the difference was accounted for entirely by their levels of salivary testosterone. The researchers also studied the subjects’ personal investment portfolios after they had graduated, once in June 2008 (pre-crash) and again in January 2009 (post-crash). In a paper that has yet to be published, they demonstrate that the riskiness of these portfolios, too, was strongly correlated with subjects’ responses in the lottery game. The past year has, presumably, been kind to those with low testosterone levels.

研究者在受试学生毕业后仍然对他们进行跟踪，观察他们会选择何种职业生涯。与预计的相同，男性比女性更喜欢具有冒险性的金融工作。这再次证实了差异完全是由于受试者的睾酮水平造成的。研究者们之后还研究了受试者毕业之后的投资组合两次，一次是在2008年6月（市场崩溃之前），一次在2009年1月（市场崩溃之后）。在一篇即将发表的论文中，他们证明了，这些投资组合的风险与受试者在之前游戏中的表现高度相关。看来，对于那些低睾酮水平的人来说，过去的一年还算不错。