"Introduction to Psychology" Notes (12) —— Gender Differences

Lecture 14: Sex



By biologist's definition, males are animals that have a little sex cell, which carries genes and nothing else – sperm cells. Females are animals that have a big sex cell, which has genes but also food and a protective cover and all sorts of other stuff.

Why is the animal with the tiny sex cell typically larger and more aggressive than the animal with the large sex cell?

• Parental investment (Bob Trivers):investment that's going to increase the offspring's chance of survival at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring.
• Difference in the size of sex cells leads to differences in typical parental investment, leading to differences in the sorts of psychological and physiological mechanisms that evolved.
• Males have to compete not merely with other males to get reproductive access but also to woo females.
• So it is able to predict the size differences and aggression differences based on differing parental investment.

Gender Difference:

• Aggression: males are more physically violent.
• Sexual choosiness: the parental investment theory predicts females should be more picky.
• Sexual attractiveness: Females focus more on power and status and more on interest in investing in children.
• the capacity for math and science: refer to Gender Differences Debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke as below.
  

Steven Pinker: intermediate positions -- that the difference is explainable by some combination of biological differences in average temperaments and talents interacting with socialization and bias.

Why study sex differences?

• differences between the sexes are part of the human condition.
• the topic of possible sex differences is of great scientific interest.
• The nature and source of sex differences are also of practical importance.

Similarity between sexes:

• general intelligence
• basic categories of cognitive:objects, numbers, peoples, living things, etc

Six relevant difference:

• life priorities: men on average more likely to chase status at expense of familiy and other valuable things in life
• interests: people versus things and abstract rule systems.this difference in interests will tend to cause people to gravitate in slightly different directions in their choice of career.
• men are the more reckless sex: intellectual risk taking, participate in risky experiment
• 3-D mental transformation: mental rotation, spatial perception, spatial visualization (correlated with mathmatical problem solving, dynamic spatial imagery prominent in physicist, chemist.)
• mathmatical reasoning: women are better at mathmatical calculation; men are better at mathmatical word problem and test of mathmatical reasoning
• variablity:males are the more variable gender.(more prodigies, more idiots.)as a result there are more men at the extreme upper end of the ability distribution from which scientists and mathematicians are drawn.

Elizabeth Spelke: the nurture position -- that males and females are biologically indistinguishable, and all relevant sex differences are products of socialization and bias. That is social forces including overt and covert discrimination and social influences that lead men and women to develop different skills and different priorities.

Humans are endowed with the core system for representing numbers and space. The system develops equally in male and female.

female advantage:

• verbal fluency
• mathmatical calculation
• memory of spatial positions of objects;

Male advantage:

• verbal analogies
• rapid mathmatical reasoning
• memory of layout geometry, mental rotation

Why are fewer women scientists?

• biased perception by fellow scientists will week out some talented women directly
• unequall opportunity will deter some talented women from attempting careers in science
• biased perception in earlier life will deter some talented girls from studying science
• the gender gap in science faculties will lead some students view high-level science as a man's world.