
Are alpha males worse investors? - charlieirish
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/02/daily-chart-13?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/
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sova
Oh my goodness "Wide faces as a proxy for testosterone levels" Nice! I'm sure
sock colors would work as a predictor of investment success just as well. What
trash. The Economist is a thinly veiled pseudoscience brochure these past few
years. Maybe it's always been that way and I'm just now noticing, but I used
to find value in their articles and not just pseudoscientific trash.

~~~
zone411
Except that there are real studies showing an association between wide faces
and testosterone levels:
[http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(13)00027-5/abstr...](http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138\(13\)00027-5/abstract)
and
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114283/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114283/).
It's not a great proxy though.

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calvinbhai
Can the results of these studies be replicated by a completely different
research team?

If yes, then good. It is believable.

Anything else, then it is to be taken with a generous helping of salt.

I consider it a clickbait headline playing on gender biases.

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znpy
"Alpha male" as a concept does not exist: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/the-myth-of-the-alph...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-
myth-of-the-alpha-male-a7724971.html)

~~~
iamthirsty
> "Alpha male" as a concept does not exist

This statement is factually incorrect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(ethology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_\(ethology\))

~~~
bringtheaction
I think parent commenter meant among humans.

From the very Wikipedia article you linked we also find:

> In humans, the concept of an alpha male was challenged as being largely
> nonexistent per an article by Dean Burnett, who found that human leadership
> roles vary wildly based on the current social context, and traits attributed
> to an "Alpha" might be exhibited in one scenario, and traits attributed to a
> "Beta" might be exhibited in a different scenario by the same individual.

Also from the same article, since wolves are often used as an example when
talking about alphas:

> Researcher L. David Mech, one of the primary creators of the Alpha male
> hypothesis for wolves, later found additional evidence that the concept of
> an Alpha male may have been an erroneous interpretation of incomplete data
> and formally disavowed this terminology in 1999. He explained that it was
> heavily based on the behavior of captive packs consisting of unrelated
> individuals, an error reflecting the once prevailing view that wild pack
> formation occurred in winter among independent gray wolves. Later research
> on wild gray wolves revealed that the pack is usually a family consisting of
> a breeding pair and its offspring of the previous 1–3 years.

Whereas among chimps and gorillas for example we _do_ find alpha males like
the article says, but I don’t think anyone was contesting that.

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Double_a_92
But charismatic, self-confident, and maybe good-looking men exist?

~~~
Pokepokalypse
Many guys like to think of themselves in this way, I'm sure.

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nukeop
The concept of "alpha", "beta" and other greek letter males is based on a
flawed study of the social dynamics of wolf packs. Not only is it inaccurate
in the context of human behaviour, it has also been since found out that it
doesn't model the behaviour of wolves accurately, and these categories do not
exist in reality.

~~~
sova
Yeah, the whole tribe or pack of wolves operates together. True alphas don't
actually assert their dominance, and you are correct that our naive
interpretations of these letters and their cardinality are quite faulty. Not
sure why people voted you down.

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Pokepokalypse
Problem is; people really really really seem to like to believe in this meme.
They want to believe in the myth of the alpha male. They find it comforting. I
think it's probably similar to supreme-being myths, and racial-superiority
myths. (who doesn't like to be told they're "a member of the master-race" or
"naturally inclined to dominate and lead, be entitled to privilege"?)

Getting this mythology beat-down is going to be a very difficult steep uphill
climb, I'm afraid. Hell, we're literally still trying to convince people the
world is round.

~~~
sova
I think of the Flat Earth "movement" as a nod and prod for people to use
critical reasoning, and I don't see it as something nefarious. We don't have
to convince everyone to hold the same views but we should urge people to hold
beneficial views for themselves and others.

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Pokepokalypse
I think they'd have more accuracy in results if they mapped-out the contours
and bumps of the subject's skulls.

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Pica_soO
At first i took the article into consideration- but then i found a photo of
the author and measured the chin to brow distance- and it turns out he is a
chronicle liar.

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teilo
So physiognomy is a real thing now?

Are writers at the Economist worse statisticians?

