Gender 12/2
Considerations
There are greater differences within genders than between men and women
People who are super masculine or super feminine have greater psychological issues
There are limits to the binary
Biological theories
Gay rights activists felt that people were born this way and there's nothing they can do
Socialization theories
Feminist scholars said that men and women were not that different biologically but it's how they were raised differently
Thinking between these two theories:
Nothing should justify unfair treatment
Ignoring either argument is very bad
Replicated early-appearing sex differences
temperament
Surgency is higher in men
Girls tend to have more effortful control and know more about what is going on
The negative affect is a toss-up
Fear tends to be higher in girls
Boys tended to be more difficult
Developmental disorders
Girls have higher anxiety and self-consciousness
Boys are more externalizing
Gender roles
Toy preferences
Balls, legos vs dolls
Activity preferences
Playing house, playing sports
Play partner preferences
Girls like to play with girls
Boys like to play with boys
These are based on socialization but have biological origins as well
Cognition
Boys have greater spatial ability
rotating things, spatial perception, how they’ll fit together
Girls have greater perceptual speed
Picking out what stimuli is important
Women tend to be better at jigsaw puzzles
Mathematical abilities is not stable (some girls do better but also vice versa)
Lack of biological differences since not stable across cultures
Size of differences
Identity
Strong cohens so big differences
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual is the most common
Strong cohens but a little bit less than identity
With toys
Males are more likely to want to play ball sports and girls want to play house
Spatial, verbal, perception
Smallest differences so gender is a poor predictor for these
Evolutionary reasons
Children are more “expensive” than females
There is little advantage to the competition for multiple mates, the greater importance of being choosy
The number of kids born by one woman is a lot less than the number of kids born by one male
The greater payoff for nurturance
Having a child takes a bigger toll on women
Paternity uncertainty
They're born from a woman so it is very sure who the mother is, but you don’t always know who the dad is
Vulnerability during gestation and lactation
It is hard to do everything for yourself when you’re pregnant and when caring for a child
Sex differences in infancy
Female newborns are…
Healthier
More developmentally advanced
Less muscular
More sensitive to pain
Before 6 months, differences in visual perception
Before 1 year, visual toy preferences
Culture and gendered behavior
Plenty of variability between cultures in the degree of behavioral differences but…
Few societies with reversals of sex-typical behaviors
Surgency and regulation were “relatively” consistent across cultures but it was not that stable and not in all countries
Meaning that there is not a lot of strong evidence for biological differences in behaviors in infancy
In older children, the differences become significant and incredibly consistent across almost all the cultures
Why?
This is likely because girls and boys have been encouraged to act a certain way and it starts when they’re older kids - socialization
Or this age is when these differences occur during maturation and growth- biological
So either biology or socialization is the same all around the worlds
Consistency grows stronger over childhood
Gender differences in cognitive abilities do differ substantially across culture
Behavior genetic studies
BG is not useful for group comparisons but…
Heritability accounts for 20-50% of the variance in masculine and femininity scales
Aka controlling how much of a man or a woman you are
But not that much so there is room for socialization aspects
In the U.S., genes may have more influence on masculinity, environment more influence on femininity
Many families want their boys and girls to be assertive, strong
They are much more variable in the way that they promote femininity
Gender cont. 12/4
Behavior genetics cont.
Cannot directly compare men and women or masculinity and femininity
Genes play a role in how masculine or feminine we are
Sex differences in lateralization
Hemispheres
Right hemisphere: spatial/quantitative
Left hemisphere: verbal
Differential
Females are more responsive (neural activity, reflexes) to right-side body stimulation (sent to the left hemisphere) and males to left-side stimulation (sent to the right hemisphere)
Males more lateralized (smaller corpus callosum)
Males tend to show stronger differences between the left and right hemispheres
Brain injuries tend to be more catastrophic
If a man’s right side of the brain is damaged, the left side will struggle more to pick up the slack
However, these are modest strengths of differences
Functional differences are found in fairly small samples, and anatomical differences are found less
Comparative studies
In many mammals, males are more aggressive and females are more nurturing
This is because aggression can pay off for males in a social setting
Increasing biological fitness
Nurturance is also necessary in some way for females given breastfeeding and whatnot
This must have biological things
Recent toy studies in Rhesus and Vervet monkeys
Males prefer mechanical toys
Female monkeys prefer dolls
Hormone studies
XX and XY assign sex but not masculinization or feminization
The process of sexualization relies on starting more feminine than masculinizing hormones happen
Animal Studies
Blocking masculinizing hormones in utero will prevent the masculinization of males
Exposing females to masculinizing hormones in tero will masculinize them
Temporary changes in behavior can be induced by hormone manipulation
Human Studies
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (girls with CAH (masculinizing hormone))...
Prefer male activities and play style
Prefer male playmates
Desire male occupations
More likely to develop male identity and lesbian sexuality (recent study)
Androgen insensitivity
Males with this condition tend to be more feminine
Dont react to those masculinizing hormones
Chromosomal abnormalities
XXY boys are more timid
XYY boys are more aggressive
Older brothers, paternal aunts, and male homosexuality
Later-born boys have a much higher likelihood of being gay
Third-born male has 30% more likelihood than second born who has a 30% more likelihood than first-born
Argues that this is a biological effect
Tested in adoptive brothers, it's not about who you room with it is who you womb with
Each successive birth leaves behind remnants that can change the sexuality of the younger brother
There is a genetic component of being gay
But the argument for socialization…
Stretch but younger boys love their older brothers
The more paternal aunts that a boy has, the greater the likelihood that they are to be gay
Not totally sure why
Naturally occurring variations in hormone levels
Puberty changes gender differences
Menstrual cycles
When estrogen is highest, women’s verbal abilities peak, and other psychological effects
But… there are only small or null effects in many studies regarding these mechanisms and most cognitive abilities, especially spatial stuff
This is a high emphasis on biological stuff but socialization is also important
More gay people in California than in Iowa
If purely genetic there would be gay people everywhere
Generations have also been increasingly gay and transgender
Maybe this generation of parents is also more welcoming
Evidence for processes involved in environmental factors for gender differences
Lytton and Romney (1991) socialization dimensions (correlational)
Most of their findings on how parents treat girls vs boys was not super strong
Only came out in a more liberal form
Boys tend to get more achievement encouragement (striving for better jobs and awards) and stricter punishment
Girls tend to get more responsiveness and encouraged dependency
EXCEPT for the encouragement of sex-typed activity
Pushing girls to play with dolls and boys to play with trucks
This is a meta-analysis which isn't great because
Same parent-gender specificity
Achievement encouragement and dependency encouragement
Done indirectly (more direction, help, supportive statements to girls)
Restrictiveness
Girls are restricted in activities outside the home
Clarity of communication/reasoning
Specific gender-typed activities
Was no clear gender effect
Encouragement of sex-typed activities (fairly obvious)
More in younger than older kids
More for boys than girls
It is more okay to be a tomboy than to be a feminine boy
More by dads than by moms