Are men from Venus also?

[avidaloca]

Men may be from Venus too
By Anna Salleh of ABC Science Online

Men and women might be on the same planetary wavelength after all, according to a US researcher who says men and women have more in common than we think.

Psychologist Professor Janet Hyde at the University of Wisconsin says men and women are more similar in personality, communication, cognitive ability and leadership than is generally believed.

Professor Hyde, who has reviewed 20 years worth of data, reports her findings in the latest issue of the journal American Psychologist.

Popular books such as Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus argue that men and women are so enormously different psychologically they may as well come from different planets.

But Professor Hyde says on most psychological characteristics, males and females are more alike than different.

She looked at 46 meta-analyses (studies that analyse findings from a number of studies) that looked at how gender influences various traits and abilities.

The studies looked at cognitive abilities, such as the ability to do mathematics, verbal and nonverbal communication, aggression, leadership, self-esteem, moral reasoning and motor behaviour, such as throwing distance.

Professor Hyde found large gender differences in throwing distance, masturbation behaviour and attitudes about casual sex, and a moderate difference in aggression.

But for most psychological characteristics, she found no differences between men and women.

Society's expectation

Professor Hyde also found evidence that differences between men and women is linked to society's expectation of how they should behave.

For example, one study analysed the behaviour of men and women playing a video game, where dropping bombs was a measure of aggressive behaviour.

Half the players were identified, the other half were anonymous.

In the group that was identified, men dropped significantly more bombs than women, but this difference did not exist in the anonymous group.

"In short, the significant gender difference in aggression disappeared when gender norms were removed," Professor Hyde said.

In another test, women smiled more than men when observed but this was not the case when they thought they were not being observed.

Professor Hyde says these findings provide strong evidence against the idea that psychological differences between men and women are "large and stable".

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Interesting but not because of the equality. It's nothing new to know that men and women are equal in the sense that there's only hu-man. The 'woman' phenotype with in her wake the rise of 'man' is a created illusion. To suggest they're really equal is missing the point about female psychology (that there is no 'woman' core in the first place).

Here's the whole paper (pdf): The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Why would there be some "society's expectation" named as cause? And if there is such thing, would a man and woman, equal as they are supposed to be, react to such expectation in the same way? Maybe not and there lies perhaps the most interesting fact of this study and thereby shows us the real inequality in the modern genders.

Lets take the bombing experiment from the research paper:

The results indicated that in the individuated condition, men dropped significantly more bombs ( M 31.1 ) than women did (M 26.8). In the deindividuated condition, however, there were no significant gender differences and, in fact, women dropped somewhat more bombs ( M 41.1) than men ( M 36.8). In short, the significant gender difference in aggression disappeared when gender norms were removed.

Now in the media it's implied that men would behave less aggressive when being anonymous without expectation about their sexual role. What we see in these figures is that it are actually the women that are less aggressive when observed in their sexual role and close ranks with the males when unobserved. They even lead the pack and I could think of several explanations for that, apart from error margin.

So this particular test shows not the equality but actually reveals the only relevant inequality when it comes to conforming and functioning in relation to the group and society. Women smile and are 'softer' because they take on such role and only because of what is described here as 'pressure' from society, a society that is mostly maintained by them in the psychological sense of course...

[Leyla Shen]

I always enjoy reading what you have to say, Diebert.

Why would there be some "society's expectation" named as cause? And if there is such thing, would a man and woman, equal as they are supposed to be, react to such expectation in the same way? Maybe not and there lies perhaps the most interesting fact of this study and thereby shows us the real inequality in the modern genders.

Women smile and are 'softer' because they take on such role and only because of what is described here as 'pressure' from society, a society that is mostly maintained by them in the psychological sense of course...

Yeah, well -- fuck that.

You ought to meet my bosses. They do this good cop/bad cop thing, ya know? The difference being that the bad cop is the one you don't happen to be talking to at the time -- always the unobserved one.

I like to be scruffy. Usually wear my hair up for practical reasons. Every now and then, I don't. On one of those don't-days when I had let it down -- messy look -- she said, "Oh, there's a hairbrush in the bathroom -- you should brush your hair before he sees you."

Course, I didn't.

My male boss smiles a lot more than the female one. He does the "touchy/feely" thing. Ew. She doesn't -- thank Christ. And, it seems, I have become the black sheep. They pretentiously argue over me all the time.

Me? I don't give a fuck either way.

And they both know it.