Week 5 Psych 119Y

Gender

is the entire collection of mental and

behavioral traits that differ between sexes

Gendered traits

”: E.g., Gender identity, sexual

orientation, verbal fluency, etc.

Gender identity is

the sense of which sex we belong

to—most XY males identify as cis boys/men and most

XX females identify as cis girls/women

Gender is non-binary (e.g., genderqueer)

§ Transgender individuals experience discordance

between their biological sex and gender identity

Yes

Gender Identity May Be Discordant with Anatomical Sex

• Anatomical sex does not always correspond to gender

Identity

gender expression (or gender presentation)= The expression of gender identity, from the clothes an

individual chooses to wear to how they walk and talk, is

Yes

Even among people who are not transgender, gender

expression varies greatly between individuals of the

same phenotypic sex as well as between individuals of

opposite phenotypic sexes

Yes

Gender Research Has Emerged from a History of Sexism

• When Mary Wollstonecraft published her book Vindication of the

Rights of Women in 1792, most people believed that only men

were capable of performing the duties required for public life

• In reaction to a history of sexism, some scholars disbelieve that

gender differences exist at all, or attribute their existence to

societal rather than biological influences

• In 2005, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers

suggested that few women entered fields such as physics due to

biological differences between the sexes, leading to his

resignation in 2006

§ 2017: Now-former Google engineer James Damore wrote a

memo suggesting the same notion with regards to the tech

Field

Yes

Sex Differences: Cognitive Traits

• Visuospatial skills: Mental rotation

§ The most consistent and largest sex difference

found

§ Cis men tend to outperform cis women

•Also: Navigation strategies

(compass vs. landmarks

• memory , perception and vision 

• All these studies, are done years ago 

• Study usion skills 

• Cis men outperform cis women on average in visuosptoal skulls 

• The answer is D 

• Cis men say go west then go southwest in target 

• Cism women say go to target and go left or right 

Yes

Sex Differences: Cognitive Traits

• Visuospatial skills: Object location memory

§ Cis women tend to outperform cis men

Tasks with spatial memory cis women tend to outperofrm cis men 

Yes

Sex Differences: Cognitive Traits

• Verbal skills: Verbal fluency

§ E.g., “List as many words as you can that begin

with the letter ‘d’”

§ Generally, cis women tend to list more words than

cis men

• Verbal list as many you can with the letter b 

• Women have an advantage list more words than men 

• 
  

Yes