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One man's look at psychological differences between men and women

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This article by Dan Polansky looks at psychological differences between men and women.

Some research questions:

  • Are there measuable psychological differences between men and women, such as cognitive, affective, executive and other behavioral?
  • If so, do they exist cross-culturally?
  • If so, are they caused by culture, by biology (being innate) or both?
  • If by both, what are the extents? Like, is it 50%-50% between cultural and innate/biological?
  • What are examples of such differences?

Some of these questions are controversial and seem not settled. It will be therefore useful to report not matter-of-factly but rather in the form of "Source X says Y". That is, in this kind of subject, relativization by source of the claim seems useful/proper/important.

The linked English Wikipedia article seems quite decent and has 132 inline references. The German Wikipedia article has 126 references. An advantage of Wikipedia articles is that different parties may try to control them and fail to do so. This may result in a degree of neutrality that many other sources will fail to have. One can read the discussion pages and see what issues with the articles were raised and what sources and claims were debated. A review of the revision history can reveal which statements were removed or modified by various parties.

For the purpose of this analysis, the words men and women refer to sexes, not self-identified genders. Although practically, this should not make all that much difference in the statistical results, given the very strong correlation between sex and gender. The choice of men and women is perhaps a bit unfortunate since it excludes children. After all, there can be differences between boys and girls. This is to be clarified. The title could possibly be changed from "men and women" to "male sex and female sex in humans"; we have to add "in humans" since other animals also have sexes.

What follows is a start, to be expanded. It is probably one-sided, with sources indicating significant innate differences dominant. To get a view from both sides of the debate, one can consider e.g. the 2005 debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke.

Controversy

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The matter seems to rise high passions. Per Pinker 2005[1]:

'Yet to hear the reaction to Harvard President Lawrence Summers's remarks at a conference on gender imbalances in science, in which he raised the possibility of innate sex differences, one might guess that he had proposed exactly that. Nancy Hopkins, the eminent MIT biologist and advocate for women in science, stormed out of the room to avoid, she said, passing out from shock. An engineering dean called his remarks "an intellectual tsunami," and, with equal tastelessness, a Boston Globe columnist compared him to people who utter racial epithets or wear swastikas. Alumnae threatened to withhold donations, and the National Organization of Women called for his resignation. Summers was raked in a letter signed by more than 100 Harvard faculty members and shamed into issuing serial apologies.'

Jarrett 2016

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One useful source is an article by Christian Jarrett from 2016 from BBC. An advantage of it is that it looks at various pieces of research for us. Moreover, BBC seems unlikely to be biased to the U.S. conservative political view, so if the findings do not meet the left-wing ideological position, a charge of bias is prevented or reduced.

Further reading:

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Some popular books on the subject are the following. One needs to use them with care/caution since they usually do not constitute peer-reviewed science or academic work.

  • Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray, 1992. A critical reception is in the Wikipedia article for the book.
  • Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease, 1999.
  • The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain by Simon Baron-Cohen, 2003.

It would be worthwhile to find serious reviews of these books and link them from here.

Further reading:

Michael Kimmel

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As per Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, wikipedia.org:

'Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, makes the assertion that men and women are not fundamentally different, contrary to what Gray suggests in his book. In Kimmel's 2008 lecture at Middlebury College in Vermont, titled "Venus, Mars, or Planet Earth? Women and Men in a New Millennium", Kimmel contends that the perceived differences between men and women are ultimately a social construction, and that socially and politically, men and women want the same things.[2]'

Jordan Peterson

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Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist. Some relevant statements by him:

"Here’s a paper, for example, indicating that more gender-equal countries produce comparatively fewer women in the STEM fields. Here’s another, showing that at least some of the much-vaunted gender gap in pay, which is caused by many factors, can be attributed to male/female personality differences and not to simple discrimination."

My estimate is that the above is controversial. It would be good to find an attempted rebuttal.

Further reading:

James Damore

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James Damore is a former Google engineer fired for airing views concerning biological basis for differences in employment rates between sexes that Google considered to violate the code of conduct. This generated extensive response from various parties via media, one notable example being philosopher Peter Singer. And thus, one can get an idea of how polarized the discussion landscape is and who supports what. As per Wikipedia:

'James Damore wrote the memo after a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback. The memo was written on a flight to China. Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo states that, whereas discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination. Instead, the memo argues that male to female disparities can be partly explained by biological differences. Alluding to the work of Simon Baron-Cohen, Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait). Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.'

Further reading:

Steven Pinker

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Steven Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist who took a stance on the differences between men and women back in 2005. He seems to have been controversial.

A 2005 excerpt to give an idea of his position:

'I'll quote from one of them, a book called Sex Differences in Cognitive Ability by Diane Halpern. She is a respected psychologist, recently elected as president of the American Psychological Association, and someone with no theoretical axe to grind. She does not subscribe to any particular theory, and has been a critic, for example, of evolutionary psychology. And here what she wrote in the preface to her book:
"At the time I started writing this book it seemed clear to me that any between sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts, and mistakes in the research. After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high, and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles, I changed my mind. The literature on sex differences in cognitive abilities is filled with inconsistent findings, contradictory theories, and emotional claims that are unsupported by the research. Yet despite all the noise in the data, clear and consistent messages could be heard. There are real and in some cases sizable sex differences with respect to some cognitive abilities. Socialization practices are undoubtedly important, but there is also good evidence that biological sex differences play a role in establishing and maintaining cognitive sex differences, a conclusion I wasn't prepared to make when I began reviewing the relevant literature."
'This captures my assessment perfectly.'

Steven Pinker is not mentioned in Wikipedia's Sex differences in psychology article as of 7 Jan 2025.

Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate (2002) is where Pinker possibly exposes evidence for his sex-difference-related views; to be verified.

A 2005 debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke seems to be a worthy read. Subjectively, I have a very good impression of that debate. It follows that two experts who study the available literature have reached very different conclusions. One may wonder whether a lay person can have a better success in evaluating the relevant literature. It is quite possible that a lay person would apply their personal experience and biases as filters on the liteature to follow or give weight to.

Further reading:

Consequences

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An error about the chief causes of differences in the direction of underestimation of biological causes can have undesirable practical consequences, as per Pinker 2005[1], starting at "Nor is a better understanding of the causes of gender disparities inconsequential."

An error about the chief causes of differences in the direction of overestimation of biological causes has clear undesirable practical consequences. It can turn out that in a male-dominated society, males are going to seek excuses to continue maintaining an unjust dominance (in so far as such exists, which I would guess still does to some extent) and to oppose rules and policies that could improve the situation.

Applications

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Some applications of the analysis and the questions:

1) If there are significant psychological differences between men and women, this opens us a potential for great mutual enrichment resulting from certain complementarity. For instance, if a man hardly ever talks to women, he may be greatly enriched by changing this pattern, and vice versa, that is, if a woman hardly ever talks to men.

2) If the biological causes of the differences are minimal and if there is a great disparity between employment distribution and salaries, interventions to rectify the matter are so much more meaningful (they are meaningful even if there are biological causes, to some extent).

References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sex Ed by Steven Pinker, 2005, newrepublic.com
  2. ↑ Mars, Venus, or Planet Earth? Women & Men in a New Millennium on YouTube

Further reading

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