Their approach is rather interesting.
We sought to empirically determine whether standard gender differences are better conceived as taxonic or dimensional. Although men and women may differ on average in myriad ways, these differences may be dimensional, reflecting different amounts of a given attribute assessed along a single dimension, or qualitative, sorted into fundamentally distinct categories... this difference has considerable importance for understanding the fundamental nature of gender differences.Using lots of previously published data (13,000 people) and subjecting it to three different methods of statistical "taxometric analysis", they claim that on most psychological measures, there's no evidence that the two sexes are qualitatively different. This is on things like sexual attitudes, personality, and interest in science according to self-report questionnaires.
They give the following hypothetical example to illustrate the idea (my picture based on theirs)
Their argument is that psychological differences between the genders are, in most cases, not because "male" and "female" are two distinct taxons.
So what? I previously covered a paper called The Distance Between Mars and Venus claiming that the difference between men and women on average are larger than previously thought, if you look at all the differences taken together. That's actually consistent with what Carothers and Reis are saying, I think, because it assumes that each of the differences is dimensional and quantitative.
In other words, maybe sexes differ only by a matter of degree, albeit by a larger degree than you'd think at first glance.
All of this leaves open the question of why they differ on average, though. According to yet another study just out, the size of the gap is correlated with the amount of gender inequality in different countries. Women from places where they have much lower incomes, career prospects, etc. compared to men, also endorse more 'feminine' traits.
Personally I consider the question of gender differences largely open because I'm skeptical of self-report questionnaire measures in psychology; objective measures of actual behaviour, stuff like crime statistics, seems to me more interesting.
The fact that the great majority of sex offenders are male, for example, must mean something; I'm not sure what, but I don't think questionnaires will help us find out...
Carothers, B., and Reis, H. (2012). Men and Women Are From Earth: Examining the Latent Structure of Gender. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0030437
9 comments:
Different attitudes toward sex stem from the fact that we are placental animals. Men can theoretically father thousands of children, women can bear relatively few. The strategies for perpetuating one's personal gene pool are fundamentally different.
Answering a questionnaire is also an actual behavior and one that can easily be observed much more objectively than crime. Surely, if there are stable differences in this behavior, it must also means something.
In "Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation" Simon Le Vay had this to say about my model for evolved sex differences and their perception: "This model is attractive in that it solves the "binding problem" of sexual attraction. By that I mean the problem of why all the different features of men or women (visual appearance and feel of face, body, and genitals; voice quality, smell; personality and behavior, etc.) attract people as a more or less coherent package representing one sex, rather than as an arbitrary collage of male and female characteristics. If all these characteristics come to be attractive because they were experienced in association with a male- or female-specific pheromone, then they will naturally go together even in the absence of complex genetically coded instructions." (p-210)
My mammalian model incorporates the same central neuronal system that ensures nutrient chemical-dependent gonadtropin releasing hormone (GnRH)-directed reproduction. The response to mammalian pheromones is also GnRH-dependent and measured in luteinizing hormone (LH) in mammals, including humans.
One need only view the perception of physical characteristics of other people as you would the physical characteristics of an appealing (or not) food, to begin to realize the explanatory power of the epigenetic effects of food odors and social odors called pheromones on the conditioning of associated hormone responses during the development of food preferences and sexual preferences.
The mistake most researchers continue to make involves the assumption that we have reduced olfactory acuity and specificity compared to other species, which leads most people to think they are primarily visual creatures. No neuroscientific approach suggests that this is true -- at a time when it is obvious that "Olfaction and odor receptors provide a clear evolutionary trail that can be followed from unicellular organisms to insects to humans."
-- Kohl, J.V. (2012) Human pheromones and food odors: epigenetic influences on the socioaffective nature of evolved behaviors. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, 2: 17338.
Women carry LIFE. What do men actually do?
Anonymous: That's true. Differences in questionnaire behaviour do mean something, but I'm not sure they mean what the questionnaires tell us they mean. All kind of attitudes can affect how people think they 'should' answer questionnaires.
But maybe it's easier to interpret e.g. crime stats, than questionnaire scores, because crime is more 'real'.
The differences in the questionnaire answers always means soomething.
Sample Questionnaire
This article mostly talks about the physical differences between male and females. There are many behavorial differences between male and female that are not discussed. Also, there are many stereotypes based on gender. Just a few examples are that females are caring, nurturing, and sexy. Males are said to be assertive, competitive, and superior. These are just a few examples and obviously aren't true in all cases, but it does a good job of listing some of the basic differences bewteen male and females.
AIS is a disease that can also be helpful in gender differences. This is a rare disease where a female is born with male DNA and undescended testes. The individual is a female in every aspect except for DNA. The indiviual thinks and acts like a female even though they are a male according to their genes. This rare case shows that there really isn't a huge difference between males and females.
I think it's strange that they could find no clear differences psychologically between the sexes. But, then again it seems like things such as masculine and feminine traits are nothing but stereotypes. When I hear of stereotypes like women are weak, dependent, and emotional, or men are strong, independent, and logical, it always brings up doubtful thoughts. There are so many different types of men and women. Bobbi and Harry seem to make a good point. I do think that gender differences would differ between countries. In a patriarchal society it would make sense for a woman to possess the 'feminine' characteristics, because she is forced into that role based on her surroundings, education, and treatment. But, in a place like America, I think the gender differences are much harder to see. Gender differences would probably be easier to observe in children, who haven't had the chance to develop opinions about gender roles or gender stereotypes, and rather just think what seems natural to them. A child would show you the differences between genders.
Men and Women are different but the same. Men have certain attributes such as fathering and women have others like mothering. These are givens but there are also gender roles that men and women take up like the male being the bread winner and the female being the care taker.
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