Your fingers mirror your personality

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-family:="" times="" new="" roman="" class="author">ROGER DOBSON & JOHN ELLIOTT</span><br />LONDON: The deepest secrets of your personality are revealed not in the stars but in your fingers. Whether you are a risk-taker or a worrier, have the gift of the gab or the potential to become a champion skier, the clues are in the lengths of your digits, according to a new research.<br />Among women, risk-taking and assertiveness are linked to a relatively long ring finger.A reduced tendency to neurosis and poor verbal skills is also likely to be found among women with this shape of hand.<br />The new links between finger size and personality have been discovered by scientists at Liverpool University. They examined the personality traits of 200 people and then checked the length of their fingers.<br />The completion of a series of studies on finger length, culminating in a forthcoming book, has allowed Dr John Manning, an evolutionary biologist who leads the Liverpool University team, to correlate a list of traits among men and women with different finger lengths.<br />For men, a long ring finger and noticeably shorter index finger have emerged as indications of good football and skiing skills, fast running and good visual and spatial judgment. Manning’s team has also related long ring fingers in men to a reduced risk of suffering a heart attack. Links between finger length and breast cancer, autism, dyslexia and fertility have also been found. <br />The key to theories linking finger length with personality and health is the critical first trimester of pregnancy. "The finger ratio is a kind of living fossil. It tells us something about the experience of the foetus before birth," said Manning. <br />"Very early sex hormone exposure is now thought to have far-reaching effects in terms of adult personality and other factors."<br />In the womb, the embryo is suspended in a cocktail of hormones which influence not just the relative lengths of the fingers, which seem to stay fixed throughout our lives, but also the development of our hearts and brains. Thus finger length in adult life gives a measure of the hormones which most strongly affected our early growth. <br />This, in turn, can be used to predict health risks and character traits. Liz Dodd, a 39-year-old company director from Birmingham, has a long index finger compared with her ring finger. <br />This suggests low assertiveness and a desire to avoid risks, which she is happy to confirm. <br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Sunday Times</span> </div> </div>