Considering a career as successful day trader? Perhaps you should stop licking your cat's butthole

Via the culture/personality/finance commenting Dealbreaker.

Risky business: linking Toxoplasma gondii infection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries

Abstract

Disciplines such as business and economics often rely on the assumption of rationality when explaining complex human behaviours. However, growing evidence suggests that behaviour may concurrently be influenced by infectious microorganisms. The protozoan Toxoplasma gondiiinfects an estimated 2 billion people worldwide and has been linked to behavioural alterations in humans and other vertebrates. Here we integrate primary data from college students and business professionals with national-level information on cultural attitudes towards business to test the hypothesis that T. gondii infection influences individual- as well as societal-scale entrepreneurship activities. Using a saliva-based assay, we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for T. gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in ‘management and entrepreneurship' over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197). Finally, after synthesizing and combining country-level databases on T. gondii infection from the past 25 years with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of entrepreneurial activity, we found that infection prevalence was a consistent, positive predictor of entrepreneurial activity and intentions at the national scale, regardless of whether previously identified economic covariates were included. Nations with higher infection also had a lower fraction of respondents citing ‘fear of failure' in inhibiting new business ventures. While correlational, these results highlight the linkage between parasitic infection and complex human behaviours, including those relevant to business, entrepreneurship and economic productivity.

You may be unknowingly mind-controlled by your cat. CNBC has the low-down:

A mind-controlling parasite found in cat feces may give people the courage they need to become entrepreneurs, researchers reported Tuesday.

They found that people who have been infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite are more likely to major in business and to have started their own businesses than non-infected people.

The parasite, which makes rodents unafraid of cats, may be reducing the fear of failure in people, Stefanie Johnson of the University of Colorado and colleagues said.

They haven’t actually shown that. But toxoplasma does get into the brain, and it’s been linked to a variety of mental effects in mice and people alike. And fear of failure could be a good thing, Johnson said.

The finding seems to address in particular politicians and Hollywood actors when it says:

Toxoplasmosis has been linked to a greater risk of "car accidents, mental illness, neuroticism, drug abuse and suicide,” Johnson and her colleagues wrote in their paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Expecting women should be very cautious.

Pregnant women are warned to stay away from cat feces in litter boxes and raw meat because the parasite can cause miscarriages and birth defects.

Finally good news:

No, your cat isn't making you crazy

It can make people with weakened immune systems very ill but most people do not even know that they have been infected, the CDC says. “More than 30 million men, women, and children in the U.S. carry the toxoplasma parasite, but very few have symptoms because the immune system usually keeps the parasite from causing illness,” it says on its website.

There are some occupations that seem to be absolutely immune to the parasite.

Johnson says she is not infected, even though she has two cats. “I had, like, four cats growing up. I felt sure I would have it,” she said. But it makes sense, she added.

“Being a professor is literally the most risk-averse job you can do,” she said.

 No denying that, in particular if it is tenured.