7 ms·

I did a deep dive on this a few weeks ago. If you're interested, the following is what I what I think were the most interesting studies. Sorry for my personal c

I did a deep dive on this a few weeks ago. If you're interested, the following is what I what I think were the most interesting studies. Sorry for my personal citation style. My conclusion is that there are differences, some of them not as big as claimed in popular media and for the majority we don't know their origin. Buss. 1989. Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures Feingold. 1994. Gender Differences in Personality: A Meta-Analysis Grijalva et al. 2014. Gender Differences in Narcissism: A Meta-Analytic Review Hall, Canterberry. 2011. Sexism and Assertive Courtship Strategies Joseph, Newman. 2010. Emotional Intelligence: An Integrative Meta-Analysis and Cascading Model Lukaszewski, Roney. 2010. Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Oliver, Hyde. 1993. Gender Differences in Sexuality: A Meta-analysis Snyder et al. 2008. The dominance dilemma: Do women really prefer dominant mates? Su, Rounds, Armstrong. 2009. Men and Things, Women and People Wood, Eagly. 2002. A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men: Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences

TulliusCicero 5y ago
> some of them not as big as claimed in popular media I think this depends on what popular media is to you. My wife is a big time feminist who hates any discussion of gender differences in personality, and going by the sources she reads, pretty much all differences that we can observe today are just due to culture. This is not an uncommon position within progressive circles.
- logicslave 5y ago
  Large scale brainwashing, but also, holding the opinion of biologically driven personality eats away at the concept of free will
  - gotoeleven 5y ago
    The creation of mass delusions that benefit powerful groups is basically the norm in human society it seems like. It used to be religion and now it's fact-free feel good wishful thinking. My lived experience. My truth. It's no different than dancing to please the sun god.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      > My lived experience. Somebody's “lived experience” is their personal anecdotes. It's often in contrast with “quantify or discard”-type bad-at-science academics who make blanket assertions about things they don't know very much about.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Calling it brainwashing is maybe overselling the point, but as an exmo it does feel similar to me to arguments around religious dogma, where people are already 100% certain on the only outcome/position that's acceptable to them, then go find the arguments and evidence that backs that. It's clear to me that many social progressives find the idea that there may be average biological differences in personality between genders to be unacceptable. > holding the opinion of biologically driven personality eats away at the concept of free will Eh, I don't think you'll find many people who dispute that there's individual variation in personalities due to biology/genetics. Hell, "born this way" (for being gay) was practically a rallying cry on the left.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      The superset is "ideology" imo. Whether the topic is supernatural or physical, people who base their lives on ideology tend to behave similarly, as you've pointed out.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I think the problem is that people like James Damore will say that women aren’t suited for work in tech, and I don’t think that’s correct. And worse, the very idea almost provides support for the abuse women regularly feel working in tech from their male coworkers. So sure, hormone differences seem to lead to different brain chemistry. But then people draw wild and incorrect conclusions like gate keeping women out of tech. And the fact that their conclusion is wrong is more important than the fact that some differences do exist. Edit: I worked at Google when the memo came out. Personally I didn’t think the memo was that bad... until I spoke to my female friends that worked at Google. They told me a lot about how women are treated in tech. And they showed me how things said in the memo that I thought were harmless actually perpetuated beliefs that they believed did cause them harm. So the people saying I am misrepresenting the situation... are you a man? Maybe you can’t recognize the harmful statements the way women do and so you do not remember them being harmful? I certainly got a lesson in my own bias after that memo came out. My close friends sat me down and we had some difficult conversations about it. If you’ve never done that, consider what you might be missing.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Yeah, sadly the conversation is dominated by extremists. The answer to nature or nurture is probably just 'both'.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Good science validates, disproves, or quantifies common sense. The nature vs nurture question is especially complicated, because a proper study effectively requires horrible experiments on isolating children from "culture" starting from infancy -- and that's under the optimistic assumption that culture isn't absorbed in the womb
    - francisofascii 5y ago
      If you were to study children from a diverse range of cultures, and found similar results regardless of culture, could you come to a conclusion? Might be easier than the removal of culture.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        Did those "diverse range of cultures" arise separately, or did humans originate in one location and spread their culture from there? Contrast to a drug trial -- imagine you only test penicillins, and nobody gets a placebo or a non-treatment, could you come to a conclusion? Are the potential outcomes / conclusions of the experiment the same as an experiment where there are placebo and non-treatment controls?
        seneca 5y ago
        > Did those "diverse range of cultures" arise separately, or did humans originate in one location and spread their culture from there? If you define cultural influence as broadly as pre-historic shared origins, I fear you've stepped into the territory of unfalsifiable claims. Interesting conversationally, but useless scientifically.
        5y ago
- w0de0 5y ago
  I think there's a distinction to be made here between sex, the biological facet, and gender, the cultural construct that maps to sex - or more accurately, maps our assumptions, myths, and platitudes about sex to an expected set of behaviors.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    That's fair, I should've said sex differences instead of gender differences.
  - slowmovintarget 5y ago
    "Gender perception" or "gender presentation" perhaps. But for the longest time "gender" meant one's biological sex. We should, instead, talk about personality as affected by gender, and behavior as influenced by personality and culture, including assumed or adopted gender norms. What the article says is that personality is affected by gender. Behavior is influenced by more than just personality. These are distinctions in cause and effect, which tend to be blurred together when using political language. Personality (ex ante) and behavior (ex post) distinctions keep getting wrapped around the axle of these attempted redefinitions.
  - Spinnaker_ 5y ago
    There is a distinction, but you can't simply separate sex into biology and gender into cultural construction. There is still much debate as to how much of this set of behaviours is biological. Many animals exhibit sex roles.
- pengaru 5y ago
  At this point we have substantial accounts from enough transgender people describing personality and behavioral effects of HRT to know Testosterone plays a significant role in things like assertiveness and aggression, at least. This American Life did an episode on the subject that's worth a listen. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/220/testosterone https://www.thisamericanlife.org/220/testosterone
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Cool, I'll check it out. On a similar note, there's this cool little article about transgender guys and the differences they noticed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feature/crossing-the-divide-do-men-really-have-it-easier-these-transgender-guys-found-the-truth-was-more-complex/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feat...
- tasogare 5y ago
  > and going by the sources she reads This is the real source of the problem. Not that multiple kind of sources exist (religious, scientific, fiction work, etc.) but that one kind try to pass as something it is not. This is particularly pervasive in fields like sociology where political essays are masquerading as science when it is in fact not. Sooner or later reality will come back, but a lot of time and money is wasted in the process, both by universities and public policies.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > This is particularly pervasive in fields like sociology where political essays are masquerading as science when it is in fact not. The "is vs. ought problem" strikes again, it seems. There are plenty of politically-motivated folks in "soft" social studies who can't quite tell the difference between talking about the world as it is, vs. what we might want it to be like. The more rigorous social sciences are a lot clearer on always striving for a clear distinction between "positive" (i.e. "descriptive") and "normative" talk.
    - 13years 5y ago
      Furthermore, when we can not distinguish between "is vs. ought", then we have a complete lack of understanding of the world. This becomes a circular problem, in that our lack of understanding means that we propose the wrong solutions for attempting to move towards the "ought" often with many undesirable results in direct opposition to the intentions.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Indeed, I meant popular in general. It's interesting you bring that up though because that's precisely what started me on this. A feminist friend and I disagreed on that and so we looked into it both came out with more nuanced views. The science does not support gender essentialism nor does it support the tabula rasa kind of thing her and your wife were advocating. The answer is that it's nature and nurture and we just don't know how much of which yet. Somewhere there's an entire Wikipedia page on people debating whether this is legitimate research or somehow sexism. I thought all of their arguments were pretty poor though. It's kind of a scary situation though that some people are so hostile to even looking into it at all. I think it's going to be really hard to figure out how much is biological vs. cultural but I suspect society may get to some of those experiments before science at this rate.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  >This is not an uncommon position within progressive circles. Many if not most progressive ideals are predicated on "the blank slate" theory being true. It's not a matter of common/uncommon opinion, it has to be true. It's an axiom of modern progressive theory. What happens when one of your axioms is anything other than rock solid? This is why the claws come out so fast when you bring up genetics in progressive groups.
- bourgwaletariat 5y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that. Feminism has done a lot of real damage to our society and to the lives of children, men, women and families. > hates any discussion hates. Hate is ruining us. She hates discussion. Discussion? "We are not discussing this. My belief is correct. There will be no discussion. My way or the highway." It's destroying us. Just like feminism. Feminism is not about equality. It's about power, mostly about people who feel entitled to more power, who already have more. Feminism, in its attempt to give women more power, has eliminated their power... to not work. Now, they are forced to go to work, in a dual income family, just to raise a child. That wasn't necessary 50 years ago. Women have always worked if they wanted to. In their attempt to fight the corporataucracy they have given it more power by doubling the work force, increasing the supply of workers, and thus suppressing wages. Same reason there's a push to get more women in tech. To make tech workers cheaper -- not empower women. It's a lie. Women blamed the patriarchy for "eliminating" their right to work. Now they have to. Do you think it's a coincidence that, since the 70's, feminism has increased dramatically, while wages have remained flat? Wages should be twice as high right now and women should still have the choice to stay home with the kids -- or men. It's been like that since human history, all the way back to hunter gatherers, and now suddenly, in a geological blink of an eye, kids are home alone for hours a day. Cared for the rest of it, mostly by people who are paid to, with no familial relationship or incentive to care for them and help them succeed. Why do we think this is good? It's not good. It's a real tragedy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

TulliusCicero 5y ago

> some of them not as big as claimed in popular media I think this depends on what popular media is to you. My wife is a big time feminist who hates any discussion of gender differences in personality, and going by the sources she reads, pretty much all differences that we can observe today are just due to culture. This is not an uncommon position within progressive circles.

logicslave 5y ago
Large scale brainwashing, but also, holding the opinion of biologically driven personality eats away at the concept of free will
- gotoeleven 5y ago
  The creation of mass delusions that benefit powerful groups is basically the norm in human society it seems like. It used to be religion and now it's fact-free feel good wishful thinking. My lived experience. My truth. It's no different than dancing to please the sun god.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > My lived experience. Somebody's “lived experience” is their personal anecdotes. It's often in contrast with “quantify or discard”-type bad-at-science academics who make blanket assertions about things they don't know very much about.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Calling it brainwashing is maybe overselling the point, but as an exmo it does feel similar to me to arguments around religious dogma, where people are already 100% certain on the only outcome/position that's acceptable to them, then go find the arguments and evidence that backs that. It's clear to me that many social progressives find the idea that there may be average biological differences in personality between genders to be unacceptable. > holding the opinion of biologically driven personality eats away at the concept of free will Eh, I don't think you'll find many people who dispute that there's individual variation in personalities due to biology/genetics. Hell, "born this way" (for being gay) was practically a rallying cry on the left.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    The superset is "ideology" imo. Whether the topic is supernatural or physical, people who base their lives on ideology tend to behave similarly, as you've pointed out.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I think the problem is that people like James Damore will say that women aren’t suited for work in tech, and I don’t think that’s correct. And worse, the very idea almost provides support for the abuse women regularly feel working in tech from their male coworkers. So sure, hormone differences seem to lead to different brain chemistry. But then people draw wild and incorrect conclusions like gate keeping women out of tech. And the fact that their conclusion is wrong is more important than the fact that some differences do exist. Edit: I worked at Google when the memo came out. Personally I didn’t think the memo was that bad... until I spoke to my female friends that worked at Google. They told me a lot about how women are treated in tech. And they showed me how things said in the memo that I thought were harmless actually perpetuated beliefs that they believed did cause them harm. So the people saying I am misrepresenting the situation... are you a man? Maybe you can’t recognize the harmful statements the way women do and so you do not remember them being harmful? I certainly got a lesson in my own bias after that memo came out. My close friends sat me down and we had some difficult conversations about it. If you’ve never done that, consider what you might be missing.
throwaway3699 5y ago
Yeah, sadly the conversation is dominated by extremists. The answer to nature or nurture is probably just 'both'.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Good science validates, disproves, or quantifies common sense. The nature vs nurture question is especially complicated, because a proper study effectively requires horrible experiments on isolating children from "culture" starting from infancy -- and that's under the optimistic assumption that culture isn't absorbed in the womb
  - francisofascii 5y ago
    If you were to study children from a diverse range of cultures, and found similar results regardless of culture, could you come to a conclusion? Might be easier than the removal of culture.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Did those "diverse range of cultures" arise separately, or did humans originate in one location and spread their culture from there? Contrast to a drug trial -- imagine you only test penicillins, and nobody gets a placebo or a non-treatment, could you come to a conclusion? Are the potential outcomes / conclusions of the experiment the same as an experiment where there are placebo and non-treatment controls?
      - seneca 5y ago
        > Did those "diverse range of cultures" arise separately, or did humans originate in one location and spread their culture from there? If you define cultural influence as broadly as pre-historic shared origins, I fear you've stepped into the territory of unfalsifiable claims. Interesting conversationally, but useless scientifically.
        5y ago
w0de0 5y ago
I think there's a distinction to be made here between sex, the biological facet, and gender, the cultural construct that maps to sex - or more accurately, maps our assumptions, myths, and platitudes about sex to an expected set of behaviors.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  That's fair, I should've said sex differences instead of gender differences.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  "Gender perception" or "gender presentation" perhaps. But for the longest time "gender" meant one's biological sex. We should, instead, talk about personality as affected by gender, and behavior as influenced by personality and culture, including assumed or adopted gender norms. What the article says is that personality is affected by gender. Behavior is influenced by more than just personality. These are distinctions in cause and effect, which tend to be blurred together when using political language. Personality (ex ante) and behavior (ex post) distinctions keep getting wrapped around the axle of these attempted redefinitions.
- Spinnaker_ 5y ago
  There is a distinction, but you can't simply separate sex into biology and gender into cultural construction. There is still much debate as to how much of this set of behaviours is biological. Many animals exhibit sex roles.
pengaru 5y ago
At this point we have substantial accounts from enough transgender people describing personality and behavioral effects of HRT to know Testosterone plays a significant role in things like assertiveness and aggression, at least. This American Life did an episode on the subject that's worth a listen. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/220/testosterone https://www.thisamericanlife.org/220/testosterone
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  Cool, I'll check it out. On a similar note, there's this cool little article about transgender guys and the differences they noticed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feature/crossing-the-divide-do-men-really-have-it-easier-these-transgender-guys-found-the-truth-was-more-complex/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feat...
tasogare 5y ago
> and going by the sources she reads This is the real source of the problem. Not that multiple kind of sources exist (religious, scientific, fiction work, etc.) but that one kind try to pass as something it is not. This is particularly pervasive in fields like sociology where political essays are masquerading as science when it is in fact not. Sooner or later reality will come back, but a lot of time and money is wasted in the process, both by universities and public policies.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > This is particularly pervasive in fields like sociology where political essays are masquerading as science when it is in fact not. The "is vs. ought problem" strikes again, it seems. There are plenty of politically-motivated folks in "soft" social studies who can't quite tell the difference between talking about the world as it is, vs. what we might want it to be like. The more rigorous social sciences are a lot clearer on always striving for a clear distinction between "positive" (i.e. "descriptive") and "normative" talk.
  - 13years 5y ago
    Furthermore, when we can not distinguish between "is vs. ought", then we have a complete lack of understanding of the world. This becomes a circular problem, in that our lack of understanding means that we propose the wrong solutions for attempting to move towards the "ought" often with many undesirable results in direct opposition to the intentions.
guerrilla 5y ago
Indeed, I meant popular in general. It's interesting you bring that up though because that's precisely what started me on this. A feminist friend and I disagreed on that and so we looked into it both came out with more nuanced views. The science does not support gender essentialism nor does it support the tabula rasa kind of thing her and your wife were advocating. The answer is that it's nature and nurture and we just don't know how much of which yet. Somewhere there's an entire Wikipedia page on people debating whether this is legitimate research or somehow sexism. I thought all of their arguments were pretty poor though. It's kind of a scary situation though that some people are so hostile to even looking into it at all. I think it's going to be really hard to figure out how much is biological vs. cultural but I suspect society may get to some of those experiments before science at this rate.
Workaccount2 5y ago
>This is not an uncommon position within progressive circles. Many if not most progressive ideals are predicated on "the blank slate" theory being true. It's not a matter of common/uncommon opinion, it has to be true. It's an axiom of modern progressive theory. What happens when one of your axioms is anything other than rock solid? This is why the claws come out so fast when you bring up genetics in progressive groups.
bourgwaletariat 5y ago
I'm sorry to hear that. Feminism has done a lot of real damage to our society and to the lives of children, men, women and families. > hates any discussion hates. Hate is ruining us. She hates discussion. Discussion? "We are not discussing this. My belief is correct. There will be no discussion. My way or the highway." It's destroying us. Just like feminism. Feminism is not about equality. It's about power, mostly about people who feel entitled to more power, who already have more. Feminism, in its attempt to give women more power, has eliminated their power... to not work. Now, they are forced to go to work, in a dual income family, just to raise a child. That wasn't necessary 50 years ago. Women have always worked if they wanted to. In their attempt to fight the corporataucracy they have given it more power by doubling the work force, increasing the supply of workers, and thus suppressing wages. Same reason there's a push to get more women in tech. To make tech workers cheaper -- not empower women. It's a lie. Women blamed the patriarchy for "eliminating" their right to work. Now they have to. Do you think it's a coincidence that, since the 70's, feminism has increased dramatically, while wages have remained flat? Wages should be twice as high right now and women should still have the choice to stay home with the kids -- or men. It's been like that since human history, all the way back to hunter gatherers, and now suddenly, in a geological blink of an eye, kids are home alone for hours a day. Cared for the rest of it, mostly by people who are paid to, with no familial relationship or incentive to care for them and help them succeed. Why do we think this is good? It's not good. It's a real tragedy.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]