Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

scientificamerican.com

47 pointsTomte19 comments

Here’s the problem. Let’s say women are on average 15% less aggressive than men on average. However, we know this type of thing is always a normal distribution, so what we have are two overlapping distributions. Classic stats 101 stuff.^

What are you going to meaningfully do with this information? If a woman walks in your store, she could be on the high end of the distribution and actually be more aggressive than the average man.

The point I’m getting at is you can’t usually make meaningful assumptions about individuals based on statistical data gathered about populations. 70% of businesses fail but your business doesn’t have a 70% chance of failure, it depends on the specifics.

So unless you work on projects like public health or prison design or something where you really are looking at populations in aggregate, this kind of data just isn’t that useful. At best it’s a curiosity and at worst it lets the small minded back up their biases with (irrelevant) data.

Even if a doctor knows that men are 2x as likely to get heart disease, he still needs to check his female patients for it if they exhibit the symptoms. If he looks at the data and stops checking women for heart disease then that is an ethical failure and just bad medicine.

^ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shahab-Boumi/publicatio...

I think the author addresses these points:

> the multivariate findings may help answer a question people have been puzzling about in psychology for quite awhile: Why do we have all these studies showing that male and female behaviors are so similar, yet people in everyday life continue to think as if males and females were very separable? It is possible that people in everyday life are actually closer to the truth because when we reason about personality, we rarely reason about one trait at a time.

> rarely do we consider the harm that could be caused by ignoring sex differences! One can think of many ways in which pretending something doesn't exist may actually cause greater harm psychologically than accepting the facts of the matter.

> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences. Nevertheless, sex differences are also part of the picture, and may be particularly detrimental to a relationship if all partners go into the marriage thinking that they "should not exist", instead of coming to a healthy acceptance of sex differences

I don't know what you're trying to do with it in your hypothetical scenario, but you can judge the expected value of aggressiveness based on distribution for the sex and be right on average. Still stats 101.

> Even if a doctor knows that men are 2x as likely to get heart disease, he still needs to check his female patients for it if they exhibit the symptoms.

Interesting example, because it's actually one that shows these things are useful. Women have worse outcomes despite lower incidence, because of underreported/played-down chest pain from familiarity with monthly cramp pain. So where we men might be saying 'oh god, my chest, it's the worst thing imaginable', in triage it pays to know that the woman saying 'ooh, my chest feels a little tight' is actually experiencing exactly the same thing.

Very interesting. I like the explanation of why studies often find minimal gender differences despite large differences being obvious in real life. Also it's kind of hilarious how the list of traits that they've found in men and women are exactly the stereotypes that everyone knows but you aren't allowed to say any more.

I also noticed that part in the article.

>Why do we have all these studies showing that male and female behaviors are so similar, yet people in everyday life continue to think as if males and females were very separable?

It could be that some gender-neutral behavior patterns are part of the modern Western equivalent of "tatemae", and that they easily appear in studies because of interaction with strangers.

Higher chances of your paper getting rejected because it mentioned gender differences would be enough incentive for academics to mention it as little as possible.

> Many couples go into a marriage assuming that sex differences in personality are minimal. However, we know that on average, females in relationships want constant emotional connections whereas on average men don't tend to be equally as interested in that aspect of the relationship.

First, I don't really recognize this weird stereotype of mixed gender couples having a preconceived idea of minimal sex differences in personality.

But putting that aside, a marriage seems the last place you should just be playing the averages rather than finding out the specific needs of your partner.

"Well, on average women like Broccoli" doesn't seem like it would go down well at the dinner table, never mind anything more important.

How weird is my spouse acting (and should I be concerned, etc), for example, is a question that would take statistical differences in personality between genders into account.

> 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.

I can't find the link but several years ago there was another paper that drew a similar conclusion regarding gender expressions such as dress; distinctions tended to be greater in wealthier Western countries than in poorer, especially non-Western cultures.

I've discussed this with a gender nonconforming friend who helps counsels young trans adults. They've made similar anecdotal observations. Modern Western culture is increasingly seeing exaggerated gender (and other) expressions, and this is no less true in "woke" culture, and no less true if not more true in the gender non-conforming camps. Modern society still increasingly defines "female" and "male" in terms of how these are externally expressed--clothing, mannerisms, social groups, etc.

I'm not trying to insinuate that this is necessarily pathological or wrong, just perhaps unintuitive given all the egalitarian and counter-culture virtue signaling. The wealthier a society the more degrees of freedom there are for these very basic dynamics to play out--i.e. groups, especially gender groups, distinguishing themselves. To the extent there's a meaningful difference from previous generations, it's that groups are freer to define their own expression. (For some definitions of freer, but notably not at the individual level except in-so-far as you can now more easily jump groups. But now you're having to do more work to fit into your chosen group.)

Article is from 2019, and also somehow goes through the entire article without even entertaining the idea that personality differences might be hormonally mediated. Women are from Venus I guess, or something.

For most of the article the author is focused on the descriptive side of these differences - he says so multiple times. He does briefly mention explanatory elements,

> I also believe that a truly mature, honest, and nuanced discussion of the origins of sex differences must recognize the deep influence of genetics and biology

Biology - that would include hormones right? The purpose of the article is not to explain the differences between sexes but to show that they do indeed exist and we should have honest and mature discussions about it. Unfortunately the topic is a bit of a landmine, culturally. At least in the West.

We acknowledge sexual dimorphism in every other species, including mammals, and the extremes of sexual selection of traits. but turn our brains off when it comes to humans as if there is zero influence of the same selective pressures

just on the off chance that someone would try to marginalize another human based on this information

how do we get beyond this?

My trans colleagues would definitely attest to the effect hormones can have on behavior.

What's a trans colleague?

A colleague who’s transgender.

I think you misunderstood - he doesn't talk about the causes of the differences at all, just their existence.

The very start of the article explicitly talks about the difference between these things, how did you miss it?

> Debates can be classified into two main types: (a) The description of sex differences, including both the size and variability of sex differences across a multitude of physical and psychological traits, and (b) The origins and development of sex differences, including the complex interplay between social, cultural, genetic, and biological factors that influence sex differences.

> These lines often get blurred. ...

> I believe that this blurring between the descriptive and the explanatory levels of analysis has stunted the field and distorted public debates over these complex and sensitive issues.

Yes, this.

> For instance, males and females on average don't differ much on extraversion. However, at the narrow level, you can see that males on average are more assertive (an aspect of extraversion) whereas females on average are more sociable and friendly (another aspect of extraversion)

Interesting! I see myself in both some of the masculine traits (interested in things more than in people, don't feel a need for constant emotional connection with partners) and feminine traits (can't stand competitive friendships, risk-averse)

> In fact, observers can correctly determine sex from pictures with greater than 95% accuracy

Ah that's probably why I get clocked so much... I should have gotten FFS before the freaks got back in power.

https://archive.is/OrOyv

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