Louis Terman, creator of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, looked at sexual differences in responses to an extremely broad array of items including inkblots, interests, personality and knowledge. He developed a comprehensive masculine-feminine mindedness test from those items showing reliable differences.
Men and women hardly differed on inkblots, differed a bit more on knowledge, even more on personality and temperament, and most on interests. On the total test, differences were substantial. Overall, only one in a thousand of each sex had a score that passed the average score of the opposite sex.
Homosexuals showed modest shifts toward the gender mindedness of the opposite sex. A group of homosexual men, which even gay men would call queens, did not even reach halfway between average masculine and feminine mindedness. The clearest difference was in relationship, aesthetic and thing-related interests.
Although Terman did look at knowledge differences, he missed differences in the way the sexes approach knowing. For example, a study on how boys and girls do maths problems showed that girls tend to stick to the standard approach taught, while boys were more likely to look for alternative approaches and short cuts.
Women in mathematics tend to gravitate toward applied mathematics rather than pure maths. That could be an artifact of child-rearing biases but the more a culture allows males and females to choose their paths the greater the differences in interests appear to be. Sweden shows larger differences than the US, and Iran smaller. In fact, the sexual difference in maths test scores in the US is non-existent in Iran. Sex-related ability differences seem more a function of interests than being inborn.
Once an extremely smart female colleague, who was more masculine-minded than most women, told me that women were humouring men when they talked about things like physics or zoology. She went on to say that they really only wanted to talk about relationships. At coffee shops you sometimes cannot avoid overhearing conversations and I have noticed that all-women groups (regardless of age) only speak about relationships. All male groups only speak about things, or sport competitions. Mixed groups tend to discuss current affairs mostly, but what each gender focuses on is different.
Flaky beliefs
Men tend to assert that women are less rational. They might even point to greater female belief in astrology, the supernatural or extra-sensory perception. The evidence does not support this. There are equally flaky beliefs men are more likely to support, such as, for example, visits by aliens. Robert Aumann (Nobel laureate in economics for his work on game theory) emphasised that people with opposing interests are equally rational. Women are perfectly rational given the focus of their concerns, such as relationship harmony.
So why are the sexes so different? In my view the best explanation is evolutionary selection pressure. When offspring are helpless for a long time, like human babies, the mother is extremely vulnerable and will need help to survive. Those who do not attract the willingness of an able person to support and protect them will leave behind fewer offspring. Those that focus on it will have a greater ability to inspire such support.
If there is any genetic underpinning of that focus it will undergo evolutionary selection. Over tens of thousands of generations, females became disproportionately interested in every aspect of security of support and protection. They became more interested in males who could and would support them, they became genuinely concerned with keeping relationships harmonious and became very awake to any sign of male unhappiness with them. Females also became concerned about showing signs of being fertile – that is, being attractive to males.
The evolutionary pressures men face are different. Firstly, the more they are able to support and protect the child and its mother, and the more of them, the better. That means focusing on extracting resources from nature while competing with, or combating, other men and predators. Gradually males became disproportionately interested in things, competition, taking risks, being open to untapped resources, and fidelity in women. Relationship security and peace was less of an issue.
These differences have political and social effects today. Women tend to extreme sensitivity to criticism. A woman on a YouTube podcast might describe her response to criticism by saying, “you literally feel you are going to die”. Even a statement of fact, such as “the green beans are cold” might cut her to the quick, and even if she may resent the man who made that remark, it’s likely the beans will not be cold next time. Women may also need regular confirmation that their male partners want to keep supporting them, perhaps by being told they are attractive, or that their partners feel cared for.
Value inequality
Under evolutionary pressures, men focused on things, variety, competition, risk, innovation and status. They put more emphasis on what they see. The competition for resources and status implies that their status rank among men is important i.e., they value inequality. They are not sensitive to criticism and may not even notice if they are criticised. A man will be sensitive to how much a woman esteems him as a man, to her loyalty to him and the care she gives him.
The female emphasis on social harmony means women value equality more than do men, are more likely to be ‘woke’ and to privilege hurt feelings over truth. They may use social exclusion – ‘cancelling’ – as a rational solution to social disharmony. Remove the disruption and the rest goes back to harmony. Many do it from early on when they declare they are no longer friends with another girl. Boys and men will be less likely to use exclusion as a means to control misbehaviour and may not understand why females do. For most of them, the obvious solution might be to directly discourage the specific problem behaviour, often via force or its threat to punish it. They may typically care that collaboration achieves a concrete goal and not care much about any squabbles that may happen.
In the modern world certain practices are no longer needed to protect or support females, or to assist males to perform those functions. However, the ancient evolutionary adaptions of both sexes still operate. Human nature is badly out of line with modern demands, much as our bodies still behave as though food is scarce when it is abundant. Role reversal, where women provide and protect and men nurture, often does not work well.
Institutions formed in order to help secure or create resources, which were in the past run by males, are now open to female participation, and that has had consequences. Arguably, this is not good for universities. As universities are now majority female at every level, it could be that their purpose has changed from seeking truth, which is often disruptive and offensive, to keeping harmony.
No excuse
Offence is no excuse for hiding a truth. Both the search for truth and keeping harmony are important, but there are times and places where one is much more important than the other.
Surely thinking men and women can admit the nature-context mismatch wherever it occurs, and together work out how to make the most of it. The “unexamined life is not worth living” and the examination can make use of both perspectives.
[Image: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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