The more that paired body parts were out of symmetry -- if one ear or foot was bigger than the other, for example -- the more likely it was that a person would show signs of aggression when provoked, said Zeynep Benderlioglu, a post-doctoral researcher at Ohio State University and co-author of the study reported in a recent issue of the American Journal of Human Biology.
There's even a plausible explanation for the effect, Benderlioglu and his colleagues claimed. Stressors during pregnancy such as poor health or alcohol and tobacco use may affect the fetus in a variety of ways, including causing the development of asymmetric body parts and emotional problems in later life.
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Benderlioglu and his colleagues based their findings on a study of 100 college students. Researchers measured the relative size of finger length, palm height, wrist diameter, elbow width, ear height and width, foot breadth and ankle circumference. They added all the differences in these pairs to compute an "asymmetry" score for each participant.
The students were told they were going to participate in a study of their skills of persuasion. They were given a list of phone numbers to call in order to raise funds for a fictitious charity. But they were actually calling people involved in the study, who had been instructed how to respond to the study participants.
Some of the people called were friendly and cooperative, while others were confrontational and rude. The researchers had rigged the phones so that they could measure how hard the participants slammed the receiver down after the call to measure "reactive aggression."
Results showed that the more asymmetry the participants showed in their body parts, the more force they used when hanging up the phone after an irritating conversation.
Say, is it too early to start a Schwarzenegger for President in 2008 committee?
Probably yes, especially since the Constitution requires that the president be born in the United States. But the tanned muscleman from Austria by way of California has clearly emerged as a force in Republican national politics. He's only slightly less popular nationally than President Bush and far more likable than that sourpuss Vice President Cheney, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll of 945 self-described registered voters.
Half of all voters have a favorable view of Bush, while nearly as many -- 46 percent -- give Gov. Schwarzenegger the thumbs up. But far more voters have an unfavorable view of Bush (40 percent) than of Schwarzenegger
(29 percent), while a quarter of all voters don't know enough about Arnold to say. Cheney, on the other hand, is viewed negatively by more voters (45 percent) than positively (41 percent). Maybe it's time for Republicans to get behind Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch's idea for amending the Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to run for president.
Of course there was one person at last week's GOP convention whom everybody loves: Laura Bush, who is viewed favorably by two-thirds of all voters, including a big majority of independents and Republicans and nearly half of all Democrats.
So Arnold and Laura in '08 . . . or should it be the other way around?
morinr@washpost.com
