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New approaches shed light on the magnitude of sex differences in personality
- pmarreck 7y agoWhy has this sort of article become anathema?
- brighton36 7y agoCharisma is telling people what they want to hear. The uncharismatic, pragmatic as they may be, are thus unpopular.
- viburnum 7y agoIt’s usually paired with a rationalization of some kind of domination or abuse.
- allovernow 7y agoI'd answer but I don't want to get banned. Unfortunately the subject of this article is begging to be discussed because the corporate world that we are all a part of is structuring itself to fix a "problem" by essentially denying human nature in favor of some unsubstantiated tabula rasa propaganda that has been fed to at least two generations of westerners. And websites like HN really feed into the status quo, likely unintentionally, by flagging related comments/articles and banning accounts which discuss the so called anathema. People are touchy about the subject because, for feminists in particular, this is a heavily moral issue and the alternative view may indicate that, yes, women really are on average less suited for many technical pursuits, a conclusion which some people are simply unwilling to accept, even though such an assertion actually says little about individuals. I guess when you're heavily invested in an identity, you take anything that might paint the identity negatively rather personally.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 7y ago> women really are on average less suited for many technical pursuits I see nothing in the article that suggests this.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> women really are on average less suited for many technical pursuits Do you have any pursuits in mind? And numbers to back it up?
- klyrs 7y agoReplying here because GP is dead... > yes, women really are on average less suited for many technical pursuits, a conclusion which some people are simply unwilling to accept, even though such an assertion actually says little about individuals. The discussion of nurture and nature here is extremely important. Also on the front page of HN today: an exposition of the treatment that young girls are subjected to on the internet. Girls are "nurtured" (abused) into the belief or understanding that they are first and foremost sex objects. Of the women I work with: over 90% in technical roles were told that "math/science isn't for girls" by at least one teacher in grade school, around 70% were told something similar in university. Of those with PhDs, more than half were told that women aren't cut out for academia by their supervisor. So whenever folks claim "even though such an assertion actually says little about individuals," it's ignorant, at best, to how our society talks about this. I'm willing to accept that "on average" adult women aren't cut out for technical roles. But given my experience at the helm of university calculus classes, I must say that "on average," adult men aren't cut out for technical roles either. But unlike women, they haven't been told repeatedly by parents, teachers, advisors, pastors, supervisors, that they're incapable on account of their gender. With all that "nurture" it's incredible that folks are inclined to make such strong assertions about "nature."
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> Of those with PhDs, more than half were told that women aren't cut out for academia by their supervisor. I want to respond to this but I'm having a hard time thinking of a response that isn't profane. I don't mean to aim my ire at you, the messenger, of course. But seriously, is it really that bad? I mean when I did my degree ('74-'77 Exeter Uni., Physics) out of about forty of us only three got firsts and one was a woman, she went on to do a Ph. D. I'm pretty sure no one said any such thing to her. Does it depend on which country you are in? I know of plenty of women in high technical positions in industry in Norway and I can't imagine that they suffer from this, at least not to that degree. I also can't imagine them suffering in silence.
- Thriptic 7y agoTypically intent and ramifications. I don't think it's a problem to point out that there are measured differences in the sexes; truth is truth if they've got high quality data to back up assertions. The danger is twofold. First, people forget that these are population level trends and that it is bad reasoning to automatically assume every individual in a given group conforms with these trends. Second, a lot of people believe dumb and backward ideas about other groups, and they'll twist and cherry pick the data to try to back up their biases without the nuance of presentation shown here. In fact, most of the articles broaching this topic are doing so from a position of malice rather than truth seeking; trying to justify some sort of discrimination or poor treatment of another group.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoInteresting phraseology there. Truth is truth ... unless it supports "dumb and backwards ideas", in which case it's being twisted and/or cherry picked? (I'm not picking on your viewpoint in particular; all sides do exactly the same thing.)
- Thriptic 7y agoNot at all. At the end of the day the truth is the truth regardless of whether we like it or not. An idea isn't dumb or backward if it has proper validation. The problem is that most people bringing this up are not doing so in an intellectually rigorous way. They are coming to the table with a pre-existing conclusion and then trying to fit data to support that conclusion. Both sides do this in fact, and approach / intent matters because doing this creates bias even if people try to stay neutral. That is a poor way to try to discover or talk about the truth. That's what I mean to say.
- escape_goat 7y agoThat's not at all what he said. What he said was "truth is truth if they've got high quality data to back up assertions," and "a lot of people believe dumb and backward ideas about other groups, and they'll twist and cherry pick the data to try to back up their biases without the nuance of presentation shown here." The difference is clear enough that your response appears a bit twisted and cherry-picked. I have no idea why anyone could think that such a vastly sweeping generalization such as "all sides do exactly the same thing" might be anything other than false, but what is contrasted here is exactly two instances, two sides, in which people are not doing exactly the same thing. There is, on the one hand, the careful presentation of nuanced data in good faith — without a witting ulterior motive — and on the other hand, the selection of data on the basis of its ability to appear supportive of an a priori conclusion, something that can be done unwittingly, but which is just as often done wittingly.
- blotter_paper 7y agoI speak only for myself. I find differences in human categories fascinating on some level, but I don't think we (humanity, HN, or even myself) are mature enough to discuss them without impacting the way we see and treat ourselves and others. Women score lower on math tests when reminded that they are women[0]. That's a horrible thing for a culture to do to an individual, and if women are sexist against themselves to the extent that it causes them to be worse at math then it seems obvious to me that men are expecting less of them as well (whether they're aware of it or not). I'm not saying discussion of gender differences should be censored, but I personally tend to not engage in them these days because I worry that propagating my views on gender differences will cause differences in both ability and treatment of individuals in ways that are hard to even measure or know whether you yourself are engaging in. This is one of those topics that might be best left to academics and future generations, depending on your goals and in what proportions you care about raw information v.s. treating humans kindly. [0]: https://web.stanford.edu/group/ipc/pubs/2006Steele.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/ipc/pubs/2006Steele.pdf
- sn 7y agoThank you for bringing this up. The specific term, also a keyword in your linked paper, which describes this is "stereotype threat" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat . I'm calling it out specifically only because it's handy to have a short phrase to describe the phenomenon, and I'm not sure if everyone is aware of it or not.
- extempore 7y agoStereotype threat is a product of publication bias. It doesn’t replicate. https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-replication-failures-in-the-stereotype-threat-literature/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...
- dang 7y agoThat's a subtle subject change from the article itself to the inflammatory ideological climate, which guarantees a repetitive flamewar. Please don't do that on HN. We want curious conversation here. Going on generic ideological tangents guarantee reruns of same-old, increasingly nasty, arguments, which is why the site guidelines ask users not to do that: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pmarreck 7y agoI asked a sincere question because I learned a lot of that stuff in evo psych classes in the 2000's (as a Psych major) and am a bit confused as to what has transpired the past few years to draw such negative attention from some circles. I did not intend to start an "ideological flamewar" and I apparently have much more faith in other HN users to conduct themselves with peace and patience when discussing... whatever the heck this is at this point. Sorry.
- egdod 7y agoThere are just certain things you aren’t allowed to think about, if you’re a good little progressive.
- bsder 7y agoBecause generally people use these kinds of articles to extrapolate from group to individual--and that's generally not a good idea. Individuals break "typical" all the time. If I'm interviewing you for a job, I shouldn't apply "group stereotype" as I'm specifically looking for your individual traits that break the norm. I don't want the "average" from your group--I probably want someone far from it.
- JacksonGariety 7y agoThere are differences between the sexes, but they are not the ones described here. These are gender differences. There's probably some fuzzy overlap, but the article doesn't cover it.
- larnmar 7y agoFor statistical purposes, the number of people whose sex and “gender” are not the same is negligible.
- JacksonGariety 7y agoYou seem to be thinking of the labels 'male' and 'female'; but I was referring to 'sex' as biologically reproduced characteristics, and 'gender' as sociologically reproduced characteristics. The labels are statistically consistent, but the concepts are quite different. Sex is stored in our genes whereas gender is stored in cultural artifacts.
- macawfish 7y agoThere are many possible hormonal modes and they are expressed dynamically, not deterministically, even within the same body. Hormonal behavior can be learned, it's not purely deterministic. People can be trained to habitually perform certain kinds of behaviors and postures that may not feel natural, and can grow into them, just as people can be trained, pressured, shamed: to carry certain attitudes or use certain language, to eat certain foods, to exercise certain muscles... but not others. Nature and nurture are not clearly separable as biological and social reductionists like to think. They intermingle in countless ways on multiple scales. People exist on many spectrums, and are dynamic, not predetermined.
- JacksonGariety 7y agoTotally agree. This is the "fuzzy overlap" to which I referred in my OP. I use the word 'fuzzy' because we just don't know how nature and nurture affect each other.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoThis is part of the nature vs nurture debate that has been argued for millennia. People try to decide which is more critical. Politically on the left, I encounter hostility when mentioning innate differences as an explanation for anything. (I always thought I leaned left politically...) I now self censor myself and it feels horrible. Everything is just attributed to deep cultural expectations and similar. Me, I think outcome = nature * nurture. It makes no sense to try to argue which is more important when they are both directly proportional to outcome!
- JacksonGariety 7y agoYeah I've never understood how people take such one-sided positions on this issue. And it becomes such an emotionally-charged subject for both sides.
- etaioinshrdlu 7y agoIt is kind of disturbing to think that your personality and many other traits make you different from other people, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's quite disturbing to me.
- JacksonGariety 7y agoHopefully we are able to use our willpower to bring about personality change over the course of our life.
- silveroriole 7y agoHmmm. Some of this seems dubious. What does “tough-minded” mean in the Scientific American review? As for the personality guessing, isn’t there a confounding factor that people are likely report and self-report women as more “warm”, “sensitive,” “anxious”, “friendly” etc than men BECAUSE we culturally think they are that? How often do you hear a man described as warm, sensitive or anxious vs women?
- kbutler 7y ago> How often do you hear a man described as warm, sensitive or anxious vs women? Quite often. Individuals do not conform to population averages.
- dang 7y agoUrl changed from https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/sex-differences-in-personality-are-large-and-important.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/se..., which points to this.
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/M9M84 http://archive.is/M9M84
- generalpass 7y agoPlease consider using archive.md. There are many of us who have no access to archive.is.
- neonate 7y agoYou mean because you use Cloudflare DNS? Happy to go with archive.md.
- generalpass 7y agoThere are several DNS servers with the same problem and some other issues as the project stated they expect archive.is to go away in the not so distant future.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dang 7y agoAll: please focus on the specific information in the article and steer clear of the ideological black holes in the neighborhood. We've had enough generic flamewars. The enduring goal is curious conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago>> Consistent with prior research, the researchers found that the following traits are most exaggerated among females when considered separately from the rest of the gestalt: sensitivity, tender-mindedness, warmth, anxiety, appreciation of beauty, and openness to change. For males, the most exaggerated traits were emotional stability, assertiveness/dominance, dutifulness, conservatism, and conformity to social hierarchy and traditional structure. I am very skeptical of any claim that such vague and abstract behaviour descriptions can be measured with accuracy. The cited studies are claimed to have been conducted cross-culturally, but I really doubt that different cultures would really assign the same meaning to these words. Even people within the same culture would understand what "sensitivity" or "dutifulness" means differently. For instance, if I like flowers, am I "sensitive"? If I cry at weddings? If I cry at Game of Thrones? At MMA fights? [1] _____________ [1] It's not a joke. I cried at the end of the Coleman-Emelianenko fight. When they hug at the end, with Coleman's face a bloody mess? I cried my fucking eyes out. Does that make me "sensitive"? "Appreciating of beauty"?
- adnzzzzZ 7y agoI think most of these are based on the Big Five, so they're defined from self reports. Personality questionnaires are far from ideal but they're what we've got and they're fairly reliable.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoYou're right. I had a look at the methods sections of three of the four studies cited in the article. It seems how they collect data is they have people fill in questionnaires, then calculate personality scores based on those questionnaires. For example, in the Mac Giolla and Kajonius study [1] the data came from an online questionnaire. I'm finding it very hard to criticise the methodology of this sort of study without [edited out] being extremely rude and dismissive to a whole field of research. But, I really don't understand how all this is supposed to make sense. I look at the plot in the middle of the Scientific American article that is marked "Agreeableness" on the x-axis (with a score from 1 to 5). I look at the papers cited. There's plenty of maths there, but what is anything calculating? What is "agreeableness" and why is it measured on a scale of 1 to 5? It seems to be a term that has a specific meaning in psychology and sociology, and that ultimately translates to "a score of n in this standardised questionnaire". But, if you can just define whatever quantities you like and give them a commonly used word for a name- then what does anything mean anymore? You can just define anything you like as anything you like and measure it anyway you like- and claim anything you want at all. At the end of the day, is all this measuring anything other than trends in filling up questionnaires? Can we really draw any other conclusions about the differences of men and women than that the samples of the studies filled in their questionnaires in different ways? Is even that a safe conclusion? If you take statistics on a random process you can always model it- but you'll be modelling noise. How is this possibility excluded here? All the statistics are quantifying the answers that respondents gave to questionnaires and how the researchers rated them - without any attempt to blind or randomise anything, to protect from participant or researcher bias, as far as I can tell (I'm searching for the word "blind" in the papers and finding nothing). In the study I link below, participants found the website by internet searches and word-of-mouth. The study itself points out that this is a self-selecting sample, but what have they done to exclude the possibility of adversarial participation (people purposefully filling in a form in a certain way to confuse results)? There is so much that is extremely precarious about the findings of those studies and yet the Scientific American article jumps directly to d values. Yes, but d-values on what? What is being measured? What do the numbers stand for? This is just heartbreaking to see that such a contentious issue is treated with such frivolity. If it's not possible to lay to rest such hot button issues with solid scientific work- then don't do it. It will just make matters worse. __________________ [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ijop.12529 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ijop.12529?
- droithomme 7y agoWell the one thing we know for sure is that neither females nor males are definitely not slightly less interested overall in field X nor slightly more interested overall in field Y because of anything intrinsic due to actual physiological differences affecting interests at the genetic or brain chemistry level. Any studies that claim otherwise are obviously wrong. Because that just can't be. It. Just. Can't. Be. Therefore, based on sound science and consensus, anyone making such a claim is very reasonably needing to be strapped to the wall, stripped of their career, removed from human companionship, scourged, then sent into the wilderness to die like the unwanted mangy dog they are.
- edoo 7y agoI hereby make that claim. One of many iotas of evidence: https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep03/clues https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep03/clues https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/2...
- causality0 7y agoI think we're quite lucky as a species, and from an egalitarian perspective, that our genders and ethnicities are so similar to each other. The problems we face today eradicating sexism and racism are nothing compared to a world in which a human subspecies had evolved in isolation for two hundred thousand years and ended up with an average IQ of 50, or if we had much more significant sexual dimorphism and one sex was vastly more intelligent than the other.
- esotericn 7y agoWell, in some sense the question only makes sense within a narrow band. If one group of humans (sex, race, whatever) were to be _vastly_ more intelligent than the other, then we may well simply not care about the question at all. Consider animal welfare. We may care about the treatment of animals to some extent, but the idea that a cow should, say, be able to become a computer science major is laughable. It's not even on the radar.
- causality0 7y agoTrue, but I mean vast differences on the sapient being scale. What if a human subspecies was otherwise the same as us but had the life expectancy of a chimp, about forty years at best? What if the difference was as small as a thirty point difference in IQ?
- cdirkx 7y agoThirty points is about the difference between humans and chimps/gorillas/orangutan. (around 70 IQ I think, but sources are very much in disagreement on this, claiming it's more around 25-50 [1]. Taking tests on animals is hard) Last I checked they were all in the "critically endangered" category [2]. [1] https://www.quora.com/Using-human-standards-what-would-be-the-approximate-IQ-of-a-chimpanzee https://www.quora.com/Using-human-standards-what-would-be-th... [2] https://www.iucnredlist.org/ https://www.iucnredlist.org/
- catalogia 7y agoI'm not sure if you tried this, but your hypothetical is quite close to a real category of people. Young adults with down syndrome (a chromosomal disorder) have an average IQ of 50 and in developed countries typically live to only 50-60. They used to be treated very poorly, sometimes exceedingly poorly. In the modern era they are generally treated with more respect than they were historically, despite almost everybody having lower expectations of them.
- stephc_int13 7y agoThere are differences between men and women, or boys and girls, on average, but what's the point of studying them? I am all for science and the search for truth, but when we study ourselves, there are potential political implications. And I am not talking only about sexual differences. There is no need to classify human beings, because in the best case it will only be accurate -on average- and mostly because the way society structures itself is already integrating all the individual differences, we do not need to reinforce that.
- r00fus 7y agoWell, it's pretty useful in psychology especially as it relates to behavioral dynamics and how the genders interact. From a dark-side point of view, it might be useful/profitable in advertising and propaganda.
- arminiusreturns 7y agoTo me this is a backwards approach to science if I am understanding you correctly in saying that we shouldn't do studies if they have political implications or might potentially reinforce differences? We should seek to know the truth, regardless of the politics of that truth, imho.
- malvosenior 7y agoWe should study everything. That studying gender has political implications means it’s more important to learn the truth, not less.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago> "I am all for science and the search for truth, but when we study ourselves, there are potential political implications." "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." --Philip K. Dick We can choose to stick our heads in the sand but whatever underlying reality is out there remains there, continuing to operate. It's better to face the truth, however painful it is, than to try to hide from it.
- seventhtiger 7y agoThis is similar to the argument used against science by religion in the past. I think the pursuit of science comes with the embedded belief that we can handle the truth. Studying the demographics of different people can allow us to accommodate them better. Maybe instead of entrenching oppression it could lead to knowledge that overcomes it.
- hereme888 7y agoReading the books on the average anatomical differences between male and female brains by Louann Brizendine, MD, the Scientific American article is simply an obvious reality. Scientists around the globe shouldn't fear political attacks due to the current political climate and modern trends, nor should humanitarian scientific publications allow unreasonable gender "studies" to be published, which were shown to be scams.
- 10101011 7y agoDr. Brizendine's books are hyperbolic pseudoscience. I stopped taking "The Female Brain" seriously when I read the stuff about how young men think about sex once a minute and young women think about it once every couple of days. Both those numbers are pretty ridiculous :^) And indeed, none of the papers she cited contain any evidence to support that statement. Source: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003668.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003668.h...
- hereme888 7y agoI don't think that article provides any reason to discredit her, or the average differences in the size and density of different brain regions, which is what I was referring to. In fact, that article presumes that Dr. Brizendine's footnotes provide any source for that particular statement you're concerned about, when in fact it doesn't. Her book is clear in her footnotes to which of her statements they apply, and none are cited to that.
- 10101011 7y agoAh, so instead of bogus citations, she provided no citations at all. Glad we cleared that up!
- hereme888 7y agoYour skeptic attitude is baseless. Her book is not meant to be an academic text. It's a casual read by an MD. You think an MD writing a casual book should cite everything? Ridiculous.
- datashow 7y agoOne of the most important sentences in this article is "sex differences in behavior are so pervasive in nearly every other species. It's just not plausible that somehow male and female psychology evolved to be identical despite the physiological differences and different reproductive roles across human evolutionary history." The point is, we not only have data of sex differences, we do have an explanation for why those differences exist. There is comprehensive book about this: Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences https://www.amazon.com/Male-Female-Evolution-Differences-Second-ebook/dp/B00CD3O3BE/ https://www.amazon.com/Male-Female-Evolution-Differences-Sec...
- starpilot 7y agoWhen Julia Galef hosted a talk on gender-based brain differences, she and the (female) guest scientist explicitly stated their Bayesian prior belief, male and female brains are different, for this reason. I can't believe how political correctness and feminism have normalized a nigh-miraculous coincidence, that male brain == female brain, while male body ≠ female body, against the entire backdrop of evolutionary biology. It makes no sense.
- kerakaali 7y agoWell, I'd postulate the origins lie even deeper. Years of male brain-focused research in psychology and neuroscience have not done this misconception any favours. It's only just recently in the past decade that researchers are looking into differences sex has on biological impact wrt drugs. Heck, even until the past few years, consensus by scientists is that perception of pain is the same across males and females [0]. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00895-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00895-3
- MyHypatia 7y ago>> It makes no sense. I think it makes a lot of sense. Of course there are differences between men and women. This has been used to deny women entrance to universities, to take out loans, to own property, vote, participate in politics, make laws, start companies, become scientists and doctors, run marathons, and make many substantial decisions about their lives. If these differences weren't historically used as justification to deny people the ability to have control over their lives, then yes it would be easier to talk about them. Given the reality of how "focusing on differences" turns out for certain groups, it makes sense why people push for a more complete conversation than just Male != Female. I have never spoken to a single person who flat out denies that biological differences and preferences exist between men and women. I think it is largely an uncharitable summary of the view that "Men and women aren't as different as society imposes through socialization." I don't think that most feminists claim that men and women have no differences. I also don't think it is politically incorrect to acknowledge that men and women are different and may have different preferences, as long as it is not used in the context to dismiss valid concerns about how women and men are treated socially, politically, and economically.
- yters 7y agoI think we'd all handle difference in capability better if everyone believed that all human beings had something fundamentally in common that made us all equal in terms of human rights. The subtext of all the resistance against demonstrating difference in capability is that if some individual or group is more capable, then in our Darwinian might makes right mentality that many seem to subconsciously adopt, those of superior capability must rule tyrannically over those of inferior ability. On the other hand, with a Christian ethic of everyone created in the image of God, and that those with superior ability have the noble duty to serve those of lesser ability, then we would on the contrary seek to discover the full spectrum of human differences and capabilities instead of hiding from it.
- dwaltrip 7y agoThis only works if the Christian god is real, which the majority of the world finds not to be the case. I think it may be possible to develop practices and communities that provide similar benefits without the supernatural baggage, but it will take some work. I've been looking a bit into spiritual naturalism lately (and related groups), but it seems it is still quite early days for these movements.
- yters 7y agoI liken it to the law of gravity: everyone falls down cliffs whether they believe in gravity or not. Similarly with the Christian ethic: it'll work regardless of whether everyone believes the underlying rationale. In fact, that is what happened in the West, its social construct is based on the Christian ethic, and continues to function despite most of the West no longer believing the underlying reason.
- dwaltrip 7y agoAh ok, yeah I'm game with importing values and perspectives, which as you state has already happened to a certain degree. It is a non-trivial process through, and I do believe we need to build up a new shared foundation, supporting layer, rituals, etc. that don't have the supernatural baggage.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoI don't want to get off topic, but the use of averages always concerns me. Averages tend to water down understanding and trigger misleading conclusion. I'll have go back and revisit this article with more focus. But my initial observation was "on average?"
- toupeira 7y agoWell I thought that was the central point of the article, that only looking at averages / combinations of traits caused misleading interprations in other studies, and looking at distributions / individual traits gives a more complete picture. Averages are still useful as a reference point.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoHow would you even discuss this topic without talking about averages? Short of assuming every man and every woman are all clones, it sounds impossible to me.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoWhat about the mean? Or the nature of the distribution. Average crushes insights.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- johnny313 7y agoThe author gets at the ecological fallacy [0] several times - the idea that group characteristics are not always useful for prediction of individual characteristics. I wonder how much of the heat in this conversation generally comes from the assumption that group level tendencies are prescriptive to individuals, though in reality individuals can display a high level of variance within the group. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy
- starpilot 7y agoIs that really even a fallacy? In medicine, they infer your risk for certain diseases based on age, race, gender, lifestyle habits etc. Individual risk varies of course, but that doesn't mean that generalization is wholesale a bankrupt concept. He never says group traits == individual traits, he states 15x "on average." Yes, there's Simpson's paradox as described in your citation, but that doesn't mean averages, sigmas are useless as a whole. They have to be applied carefully, which Kaufman addresses.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThey generalize in that case because there usually isn't a way to know your individual risk factor. I don't really see how that same principle applies to personality, which is obviously much more visible.
- starpilot 7y agoWow, this is really reasonable. It's sad that Damore lost his job for espousing incredibly similar views. No wonder "on average" is used 15 times.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into flamewar.
- acollins1331 7y agoLol how do you measure someone's agreeableness? Surveys? Bunk science.
- jeffdavis 7y agoWe need boldness when studying science but humility when applying it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It can lead to prejudice or worse. But the solution is not less knowledge, the solution is greater humility in applying it. So let's keep learning, but not let the latest findings justify things we know are really wrong. As we learn yet more, it will add nuance and eventually vindicate what we knew was right all along: respect people as individuals.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoJust out of curiosity, what do you believe the applications are as presented in the research?
- rstuart4133 7y agoI don't know if it an application or not, but I've tried to use stuff I've learnt from similar studies to attract more females to computing. It's a purely selfish thing - I like working in mixed teams. It can be very difficult to get a mixed small team when only 1 in 5 people are female. One of the things you rapidly conclude is the things that SJW's tend to foam at the mouth about things that probably don't matter. In particular the general assumption women avoid male dominated occupations because they like working with men is just as wrong as saying you don't find in men in child care professions because they don't like working with women. Unfortunately they don't like you saying that. Worse, when you say the differences are real, and the best way to attract women is probably to give them roles they like doing, they go ballistic as your suggestions tend to undermine whatever justification they have for their crusade. An example of such a proposal is since women tend to like working with other people, we do have tasks that tend to focus on working with people like help desks and finding business requirements and doing the design work is a good idea. (But I admit that idea is just a wild guess from a man, and really we need women to prod us in the right direction.) Unfortunately, it's even worse than that. The loud, aggressive, chest thumping way the SJW's seem to operate in when championing women's causes appear to me to be the very antithesis of the way women prefer to interact. (I guess that's no saying much - I can't say I like it either.) But in any case the irony is bitter and hard to swallow. Here we have people claiming to be working to attract more women to the profession, yet their action in pursuing that goal seem to be almost deliberately calculated to drive them away. Anyway, enough of the rant. To answer your question, the research is an obvious starting point when you want to address gender inequality - whether it be women in IT or men in teaching.
- scythe 7y ago>Contrary to what one might expect, for all of these personality effects the sex differences tend to be larger-- not smaller-- in more individualistic, gender-egalitarian countries. My working guess is that social dynamics in highly individualistic countries tend to be more competitive, while less individualistic countries are more ritualized -- arranged marriage being a prototypical example of collectivist norms. It seems like a more competitive culture (on both friendly and romantic levels) may lead to increased pressure to express gendered traits -- or it may simply lead to higher levels of stress in social situations, which causes unconscious influences to have more effect. But do these hypotheses fit the Russia datum? I'm not sure.
- jeffdavis 7y agoAre male and female humans more similar than our evolutionary predecessors? In other words, is there some evolutionary pressure causing convergence between the sexes? The reason this question is interesting is because natural selection only cares about the big picture (did the individual survive and reproduce or not?), not the fine details (does the individual have empathy, take risks, etc.). So, perhaps males and females are different in many fine details, but evolution has forced us to have the same overall capabilities? That, in turn, might explain how a man and woman might make different decisions -- as long as both decisions seem likely to lead to survival and reproduction -- even when their capabilities qualify them for either decision equally.
- h0l0cube 7y agoI had the same thought reading this article as I did when reading Damore's memo: to what end? I'm not sold on the benefits purported by this article for talking about the statistical variances between different cohorts for people, but I can see how it's very capable of stoking prejudice in ways that are very harmful. The article makes a vague attempt at balance by noting that individual differences are more important than these statistical variances, but it's easy enough to just leap-frog to this conclusion and just treat each other as human beings.
- tobefrank 7y agoI like the take in this article on the greater damage you can do ignoring the facts. You end up guessing at other explanations for why people aren't comfortable in certain working environments (that others love) and end up inventing chains of mistruth that just make things worse and people more miserable. Damore wanted to encourage diversity by acknowledging sex differences - eg: change the workplace for more feminine sensibilities with practises like pair programming. Fear of prejudice is always good but we should fear blind ignorance too.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoIt's hard not to read this comment as, "I don't like the conclusion, so it'd be better if we simply stayed ignorant of these facts." Why do you need to be 'sold' on scientifically verified knowledge? > The article makes a vague attempt at balance by noting that individual differences are more important than these statistical variances This is not an "attempt at balance", because individual variance and group averages are not competing ideas or opposing ideologies that must be balanced against each other.
- h0l0cube 7y ago> Why do you need to be 'sold' on scientifically verified knowledge? Nothing wrong with scientific inquiry, but when such facts are placed in context of, say, an internal memo at Google, or, an opinion piece in popular scientific press, it has rhetorical impact. You have to wonder 'to what end' they are hoping for with their exposition. With the Google memo, did they hope to change hiring strategies? Would this have had any real impact on the operations at Google? Did Damore feel that the hiring strategies at the company were having any tangible negative outcomes... if so, he didn't care to mention that. So why then? Same with this article. What is the author's concern here? What is really lost when we cease to generalize people's behavior by sex? The article gave no compelling answers.
- matty_boy 7y agoDon't read this if you're working at Google!
- matty_boy 7y agoDon't mention this article if you work at Google!
- brokenkebab 7y agoWhile your call sounds heartwarming, it's not really possible regretfully. The very reason why we have these discussions is the popularity of purely political poststructuralist/postmodernist theories which essentially claim that sex differences is a sort of global historical conspiracy to maintain "structural" inequality. It's not a scientific theory vs scientific theory - it's political doctrine vs scientific theory. And it's not possible to not to touch ideological/political issues when one of the views has got near-dominance mostly by political pressure such as breaking careers (remember James Damore?), defunding, and deplatforming opponents for expressing valid scientific opinions. Added: Certainly being civil is possible in any debate, it's just the idea that one can steer clear away from politics in this issue which I believe is impossible.
- dang 7y agoOf course it's possible to focus on the specific information in an article and not get sucked into ideological boilerplate. It takes conscious care, but HN commenters should be exercising that anyway. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21792862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21792862.
- boxfire 7y agoAs I read the article which hit a lot of my favorite stretches of measure and the assumptions underlying inference I couldn't help but notice the only instance of "trans" is transcendence in a footnote. One can't help but wonder how do you factor the generational recursion these traits have. We know how much some of these are due to our environmental exposure, and how we are socially trained. Transgender people are in the crux of this colossal attempt to define personality by measure, and yet I literally do not see us mentioned even once. I'd like to know where a set of my cohort follow in this D measure from their assigned gender to their expression. Are nonbinaries truly in the middle? What does this distance look like in settings where traits are conditionally measured? E.G. how do highly empathetic men compare to highly empathetic women? These questions are salient to me because I am in the early stages of transition myself and I find articles like this always lacking key details to sate my curiosity.
- luord 7y agoAnother area where acknowledging sex personality differences is important is in education. In quite a few countries, young men are falling behind young women in pursuing education (for whatever reason, it might just be that modern educational systems are coincidentally better fit for "female" personalities); a teacher who acknowledges these differences might be better prepared to teach boys and encourage them better, or plan classes in ways that help both groups.
- camgunz 7y agoTo be honest, this roll-up of current sex differences research doesn't convince me of fundamental biological differences. If we had equivalent cultures that were matriarchal to the degree that cultures like the US or China (being super broad here) are, then that would be something. Looking at patriarchal countries just says to me "we encourage these personality traits in girls and women most everywhere", and I don't see any research disentangling those. In fairness it's probably impossible, but I think that critique should temper our expectations when it comes to research like this.
- 10101011 7y agoAny other female HN readers feel viscerally uncomfortable and discouraged after reading this? I get that people =/= averages, but I don't want to bet on myself being even MORE of an outlier than the men who achieve what I want to (become a great programmer, found a wildly successful startup...) Just want to get a sense of whether my reaction is normal. Bonus points if you can tell me how the hell you cope with seeing stuff like this.
- intarga 7y agoYour reaction is totally normal. I think it's because the discussion comes from a male perspective, as given to an audience that is assumed to be male. >Bonus points if you can tell me how the hell you cope with seeing stuff like this. I think the solution is simply not to engage with it. The topic is indeed worth discussing, but only when women are given an equal part in the conversation. As you can see by the fact that I'm commenting here though, I've failed to take my own advice... >but I don't want to bet on myself being even MORE of an outlier than the men who achieve what I want to FWIW I don't think you need to worry, I've yet to see any evidence that women in tech are any less capable than men. Most of the discussion seems to revolve around men trying to justify why we're underrepresented.
- 10101011 7y agoThank you for your response - glad to know I'm not alone. To address your last point, I meant "more of an outlier" in the mathematical sense: if for a given trait that's beneficial to, eg, startup success (like dominance or risk-taking), the distribution is overlapping bell curves with similar SDs but a higher mean for men, then I am by definition less likely to have a high level of that trait. Obviously a simplified model, but the article seems to say it's a valid one. Part of me says you're right and I shouldn't engage - the other part wants to gather more data to reason about this properly, but worries I'll see stuff that I'll wish I hadn't.
- 10101011 7y agoUpdate after talking to a friend: I (along with the rest of the commenters) failed to consider a major piece of information, which is that any study of people older than babies does not prove anything about those people's inherent characteristics.