There is growing scientific interest in the role of testosterone in financial risk-taking – a topic of considerable public interest too, with complaints of there being ‘too much testosterone on Wall Street’. Both research and debate is often is grounded in an implicit model in which testosterone is presumed to be the proximal mechanism underlying the evolved masculine trait of risk-taking. This talk will identify a number of conceptual and empirical problems with the underlying assumptions of this model, and report preliminary findings from a meta-analytic study on testosterone and financial risk-taking.

 

Cordelia Fine is a Professor in the History & Philosophy of Science programme at the University of Melbourne. Her second book, Delusions of Gender, was shortlisted for numerous awards, and named as a best non-fiction book of the year by the Washington Post and an Evening Standard book of the year.  Her latest book, Testosterone Rex, was the winner of the prestigious Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book prize 2017, and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing. 

 

Contact details: Colin Klein

 

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