dr. del tackett from "focus on the families" truth project

The Real Cause of the Financial Crisis: Testosterone
Posted on October 7, 2008Filed Under Worldview
I was very proud of a former student who called my attention to an article that was posted last Tuesday on Scientific American’s news blog and later ran in USA Today.
It appears we have found the culprit in our current financial crisis: men and their pesky hormone, testosterone.
The conclusions come from examining the testosterone levels in the saliva of 98 male Harvard students who were observed playing an investment game with real money. Those with higher hormonal levels and whose faces looked more masculine (whatever that means) invested 10% more of their money in the game.
So, the article states it is quite possible that it was the high levels of testosterone in men that led them into “irrational risk-taking” behavior, resulting in our current financial crisis.
The co-author of the study, Anna Dreber, then observed that the current plunges in the market are likely caused by men whose testosterone levels dropped because they were losing financially and therefore became risk averse, causing them to break into an irrational selling spree.
So, if I understand this correctly, the story goes like this: high testosterone levels in men cause irrational risk-taking, which produces a financial crisis. The financial crisis then makes them feel like a loser, which drops their testosterone level, causing them to panic, run from risk, sell, sell, sell, and the market plunges.
It is not surprising, then, that Dreber concludes by saying that if we had “more average women” trading, then the stock market would look different. By this, I assume she means the markets would obviously be much better, stable and without crisis.
Is this simply another attack on men? Sure. In the overwhelming feminization of our culture, this brand of the blame game isn’t unusual. But it isn’t as if men don’t deserve a good portion of the blame. I’m actually not going to argue against that. What I will argue against is the identification of the underlying cause.
The article would lead us to believe that the truth behind the behavior of man lies in the material realm…in this case, his level of testosterone. Supposedly, the solution to the problem would therefore lie in putting non-testosterone creatures in his place—women or possibly emasculated men, I suppose. Or maybe we could come up with a testosterone-leveling pill that we could give men to keep their hormonal levels in check. Kind of like what we do when little boys act like little boys in school.
So men, at least, now have a clear excuse for the financial crisis: “The testosterone made me do it!”
But this is the blindness of naturalism: a denial of the spirituality of man and his fallen nature. This denial prevents us from accurately diagnosing the real cause of social pathologies.
In 1675 and 1676, the colonies were reeling under the onslaught of King Philip’s War. The streets of towns like Swansea and Dartmouth, Taunton and Sudbury were littered with the bodies of mutilated men, women and children. It appeared as if nothing could withstand the force of thousands of King Philip’s braves. In the midst of this, Peter Folger, the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin, wrote these words:If we then truly turn to God,He will remove His ire.And will forthwith take this His rodAnd cast it in the fire.Let us then search what is the sinThat God doth punish for;And when found out, cast it away,And ever it abhor.
Peter Marshall writes:“By April 1676, there was scarcely a man or woman in all of New England who was not diligently searching his or her own soul for unconfessed or unrepented sin. In fact, it became unpatriotic not to do so—as if one were not doing one’s part for the war effort.”
Four months later the war was over. It cost this nation proportionately more lives than any war we have fought since.
But there is a lesson here that we have forgotten. It is in the midst of trials and trouble that God’s people must turn to Him, on repentant knees, not seeking to find ultimate blame in others or in their hormones as if we were merely beasts driven by some physical cause & effect or stimuli/response mechanism beyond our control. If we are to turn this nation around, we must again be forthright in recognizing the real cause of social upheavals and be willing to deal with them rightly: selfishness, greed, lust, coveting, lying, stealing…not only at the individual level, but at the corporate and governmental levels.
These are times that call for repentance, not recrimination.
These are times that call for self denial, not self-actualization.
These are times that call for bravery and courage, not fear and retreat.
For these are actually times of great opportunity…for we are not like those who are “without hope and without God in this world” (Eph 2:12).
When the night is the darkest, a light shines its brightest.