Sex & Gender Sex Differences in Personality

Angela

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I don't disagree with the paper, so long as people are aware, and as the author emphasizes, that these are "AVERAGES". People are complicated. They can fit the "norm" in a lot of areas, and yet be outside it in others.

See:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...ing-sex-differences-in-personality-seriously/

"On average, males tend to be more dominant, assertive, risk-prone, thrill-seeking, tough-minded, emotionally stable, utilitarian, and open to abstract ideas. Males also tend to score higher on self-estimates of intelligence, even though sex differences in general intelligence measured as an ability are negligible [2]. Men also tend to form larger, competitive groups in which hierarchies tend to be stable and in which individual relationships tend to require little emotional investment. In terms of communication style, males tend to use more assertive speech and are more likely to interrupt people (both men and women) more often-- especially intrusive interruptions-- which can be interpreted as a form of dominant behavior.Of course, there are many men who don't display high levels of all of these traits. But that fact doesn't contradict the broader pattern. For instance, I can recognize that I am a man who has quite a mix of extremely masculine and extremely feminine personality traits and also recognize that my own personal experience doesn't invalidate the generalizable findings. Which is why I will keep italicizing on average to emphasize that point.
In contrast, females, on average, tend to be more sociable, sensitive, warm, compassionate, polite, anxious, self-doubting, and more open to aesthetics. On average, women are more interested in intimate, cooperative dyadic relationships that are more emotion-focused and characterized by unstable hierarchies and strong egalitarian norms. Where aggression does arise, it tends to be more indirect and less openly confrontational. Femalesalso tend to display better communication skills, displaying higher verbal ability and the ability to decode other people's nonverbal behavior. Women also tend to use more affiliative and tentative speech in their language, and tend to be more expressive in both their facial expressions and bodily language (although men tend to adopt a more expansive, open posture). On average, women also tend to smile and cry more frequently than men, although these effects are very contextual and the differences are substantially larger when males and females believe they are being observed than when they believe they are alone."

"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. One could make the point that many of these differences aren't huge, and they'd be mostly right if we just stopped our analysis here [3]. However, in recent years it's becoming increasingly clear that when you take a look at the overall gestalt of personality-- taking into account the correlation between the traits-- the differences between the sexes become all the more striking."

"Interestingly, yes. You can calculate a metric called D which is a summary of how statistically separate two groups are from each other (i.e., how good of a line you can draw between groups from a statistical point of view). This metric allows you to take into account how all of the personality traits tend to be related to each other in the general population. For instance, people who are conscientious also tend to be more emotionally stable, so if you find someone who is very conscientious and also super neurotic, that person stands out more (has a more unusual personality profile) given the overall correlational structure. With more traits, things get even more interesting. You can have a combination of traits that are less expected, and thus more informative, because they go against the trends of the correlational structure [5]."

And the latter, gents, is me. :)
 

"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. One could make the point that many of these differences aren't huge, and they'd be mostly right if we just stopped our analysis here [3]. However, in recent years it's becoming increasingly clear that when you take a look at the overall gestalt of personality-- taking into account the correlation between the traits-- the differences between the sexes become all the more striking."

So, the more free an individual is to be whatever they want to be, the more their personality, "on average," aligns with their sex. I suppose at this point someone (me) should mention Jordan Peterson.

BTW, I'm surprised there are no comments yet on the cited article. I would have thought the author would have been flamed by now.
 
So, the more free an individual is to be whatever they want to be, the more their personality, "on average," aligns with their sex. I suppose at this point someone (me) should mention Jordan Peterson.

BTW, I'm surprised there are no comments yet on the cited article. I would have thought the author would have been flamed by now.

If universities really wanted to provide a balanced education, he should be required reading.
 

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