The Empathising-Systemising Split in Musical Tastes

Well, I guess this answers my previous question...

Your taste in music says a lot about how you think, according to new study

Whether you prefer Jeff Buckley or Metallica, Vivaldi or Queen reveals a lot about the way you think, according to a new University of Cambridge study.

Over the past decade, researchers have examined how musical preferences reflect age and personality. For example, studies have shown that fans of the blues, jazz, classical and folk tend to be open to new experiences, while those who prefer pop, soul, funk and electronic music are more likely to be extraverted and "agreeable".

This latest study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, looked at how "cognitive style" – classified as scoring highly on "empathy" (the ability to recognise and react to others' thoughts and feelings) or "systemising" (an interest in understanding the rules that underpin systems like car engines, music or the weather) - influences musical taste.
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Strong empathisers tended to prefer "mellow" music like R&B/soul, soft rock and adult contemporary, while strong systemisers favoured "intense" genres like punk, heavy metal and hard rock, the researchers discovered.

Norah Jones.  Photo: Frank W. Ockenfels

Cognitive style influenced musical preferences even within genres, according to the findings. For example, empathisers preferred mellow, unpretentious jazz; systemisers preferred intense, complex and avant-garde jazz.

The study also found also that strong empathisers preferred music that was sad and depressing (as opposed to animated and fun), had emotional depth (relaxing and thoughtful, as opposed to cerebral or complex) and low energy (gentle and sensual, as opposed to tense and thrilling).

Systemisers preferred the opposite, that is, music that was high energy, complex and animated.

Probably a lot of truth in that actually.  And to think, all this time, I assumed that the type of people who listened to the likes of Norah Jones just weren't into music all that much, and so, listened to safe boring stuff.

Note: There is also a male/female dimension to this split, as the study goes into, though this article doesn't touch on it for some reason.

Now as for Presidents and Prime Ministers...

Traders' testosterone 'makes them take financial risks' 

Rearchers simulating the financial trading floor in the lab have found that traders' hormone levels in the stressful, competitive environment are raised, making them invest in more risky assets.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, found that when given doses of either cortisol or testosterone, the participants buying and selling assets among themselves invested more in risky assets.

They measured the volunteers' natural hormone levels in one experiment and artificially raised them in another.

"Our view is that hormonal changes can help us understand traders' behavior, particularly during periods of financial instability," said Dr. Carlos Cueva, PhD, one of the lead authors of the study, from the department of economics at the University of Alicante, Spain.

Cortisol is elevated in response to physical or psychological stress, increasing blood sugar and preparing the body for a fight-or-flight response.

The authors suggest their findings could help with the development of more stable financial institutions.

The paper's conclusion is:

"Our results suggest that changes in both cortisol and testosterone could play a destabilizing role in financial markets through increased risk taking behavior, acting via different behavioral pathways."

Dr. Ed Roberts, from the department of medicine at the UK's Imperial College London and one of the lead authors of the study, says: "Our aim is to understand more about what these hormones do. Then we can look at the environment in which traders work, and think about whether it's too stressful or too competitive.

"These factors could be affecting traders' hormones and having an impact on their decision-making."

Huh.  So, time to ban men from the trading-desk for the sake of the global economy ?


But no, the study didn't actually speak to the idea that testosterone levels in men might lead to financial crises.  Would anyone actually suggest...

Hormones such as testosterone are responsible for driving young male traders to take increasingly ill-calculated risks that turn bull markets into bubbles and even financial crises, according to neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates.

Coates, who is now a Senior research fellow in Neuroscience and Finance at Cambridge University, told the audience at DLD Women that biology had a major contribution to the global financial crisis. He said: "Every blow-up in a bank of $1 billion or more occurs at the hands of a trader at the end of a multi-year winning streak. You become euphoric, delusional and overconfident. You take way too much risk and there are terrible risk-reward trade-offs."

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Testosterone gets released into the body at points of competition, risk-taking and victory. In the animal kingdom, this leads to the " winner effect". This is where a male that wins a battle generates higher levels of testosterone, which in turn helps him to win again in the next fight. However, after a while, the animal surpasses the optimal level of testosterone and starts to become impaired and over-confident. "Animals go out in the open, pick too many fights, patrol areas that are too large and there are increased rates of predation. Risk taking becomes risky behaviour. That's exactly what is going on in Wall Street," Coates said.

Guess so.


Still, it's worth the risk right, because most of the time, men reap better results ?

The female-favoring trend the Journal identified stems from research suggesting that companies run by women simply do better.

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But the benefits of investing in female-led financial endeavors go even further than the Journal has it: Hedge funds run by women tend to outperform other hedge funds. A report put out in early 2013 by the accounting firm Rothstein Kass indicated that between January 2012 and September 2012, an index of 67 hedge funds owned or managed by women had a return of 8.95 percent—significantly more than the 2.69 percent return generated by an index “designed to be representative of the overall composition of the hedge fund universe.”

Whoops.  So, yeah...of the many things at which men suck and probably shouldn't be trusted with, such as, er geopolitics, we can apparently add trading on the stockmarket to the list.

The Arquettegate Intersectionality

So, Patricia Arquette made some comments backstage at the Oscars, à propos of her call for pay-equality for women, that were perhaps not best calculated, and apparently people took it badly, and argued about it on Twitter, as people will.  Whatever, don't care, move on.  Having read a transcript of Arquette's comments, and not following Twitter, I naively assumed that the cause of offence was the implication that somehow the fights for equality for racial minorities and the 'gay community' were already and fully won, and that now it was the time to focus on women.  But, no.

Being fool enough to listen to a certain podcast (rhymes with rib lime), I am reliably informed that the problem was 'Intersectionality'.  Okay, let's take a look-see on the old wiki, and ah, fuck me.  Scroll, scroll, scroll...'a Marxist-feminist critical theory'...ugh.  I'm remembering now why I never liked liberals when I was younger.  Yeah, I get it, the experience of a black lesbian is different from that of say a black man or a white woman, and people can be oppressed along multiple axes of identity.  Yeah, no shit.