People With "Warrior Gene" Better at Risky Decisions

[ccoop]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19830-people-with-warrior-gene-better-at-risky-decisions.html

[lukev]

Yet another sensationalist headline.

Actual content - The gene MAOA-L has to do with neurotransmitters and there is a correlation between presence of the gene and the risk-aversion of 83 men in the study.

[hugh3 → lukev]

Indeed. And the bit about making "better decisions" is particularly rubbish; they make the more rational decision in one artificial situation which has been engineered (would you like $2 or a fifty fifty chance of winning $10 or losing $5?) so that the risky option is the more rational one.

[travisp → lukev]

And the difference is very small. The risky option was chosen by 41% of MAOA-L carriers, and 36% of MAOA-H carriers.

In other words, knowing which version of the gene someone had would tell you absolutely nothing about them.

[Estragon → lukev]

It's not as though you'd expect anything better from New Scientist.

[adriand]

This reminds me: did we ever get to see results from that "Are Entrepreneurs pirates?" test that ran on HN a while back?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898317

[dguido]

Neat, I wonder how long before it shows up in 23andMe tests.