- Men and Women Are Different!
by G. Scott Alamanach Mikalauskis
A number of recent scientific studies by mainstream psychological researchers are finding a remarkable pattern that is forcing many people to reconsider their views about society and the people who populate it. Men and women, it seems, are different from each other. These differences go beyond the obvious physical distinctions in size and reproductive organs; these newly discovered differences exist at the behavioral level. Men and women do not just look different, they act differently too. From mathematical reasoning to moral decision-making, researchers are discovering an array of distinct behavioral patterns that distinguish men from women. Here¹s a breakdown of some of these stunning recent discoveries:
MATHEMATICAL REASONING
For years it has been well-documented that boys, on average, tend to slightly outperform girls in mathematical ability. Researchers have attributed this disparity to sociological forces; girls, the researchers say, are taught different pursuits than boys, and this difference in treatment has resulted in weakened math abilities. Given that boys and girls attend the same schools, participate in the same math classes, study from the same books, have equal access to the same teachers, do the same homework, and take the same tests, and given that the peculiar nature of mathematics allows for perfectly objective scoring, it is unclear exactly where serious differences in treatment sneak in. All the same, researchers have assured us that it is the different treatment of girls that has caused gender differences in math performance.
But reaserch at the University of Georgia, conducted by Martha Carr and Donna L. Jessup, hints that something more than sociological forces may be at play behind disparate math scores. A study of first-graders found that boys and girls do not adopt the same strategy for solving addition problems. When learning to add, the boys in the study tended to memorize answers to problems and to retrieve these answers from memory when needed. They would persist in this strategy, and even increase its use, even when it caused them to suffer mistakes. The girls, possibly out of a stronger desire for accuracy, tended to rely on counting aids such as counting on their fingers. It may be that these fundamental differences in approaches to mathematics result in different math abilities later in life.
MORAL JUDGEMENT
In ages past, the uneducated common people, lacking the enlightenment of our modern sociological researchers, sometimes argued that women were unfit for leadership roles because they were too emotional and too caring. There are some problems with juxtaposing this idea with history; the country of Portugal, to cite only one example, exists because of a woman¹s leadership.
But are women more caring than men? Some new research provides evidence that they may just be. A study by William Indick, John Kim, Beth Oelberger, and Lauren Semino at Cornell University tested the moral responses of men and women to a series of hypothetical dilemas.
The dilemas had a similar theme. In one, the test subject imagines to be a trolley rail switch operator who observes a runaway trolley that is about to run down one, two, three, or more people stuck on the track. As the switch operator, do you throw the switch, derailing the trolley, saving the people, but killing the trolley operator? Or do you do nothing, and thereby avoid killing (and being responsible for the death of) the trolley operator? In another dilema, the subject is supposed to be a general in a war. The general can stop the enemy advance and save his city by blowing up a particular bridge. But this bridge happens to be occupied by civilians from the city. To blow up or not to blow up? Finally, a CEO is faced with the choice of shutting down a chronically unprofitable factory, though doing so would result in the unemployment of thousands of workers.
In all these dilemas, the do-nothing choice‹do not derail the train, do not blow up the bridge, do not shut the factory‹are examples of deontological reasoning. They follow some ethical rule, such as do not kill, even at the expense of a greater good. In these particular examples, this choice also suggests a certain emotional attachment; it is easier to empathize with factory workers and bridge dwellers than to appreciate the real but abstract problems of economic profitability and military science.
The sacrificial choice requires teleological reasoning; selecting the outcome that will yield the greatest benefit to the greatest number, regardless of partiality to certain individuals. In the particular examples, such reasoning also requires an abrogation of the ethical rules that are obeyed in deontological reasoning.
In the trolley example, the subjects' responses depended on the exact number of people stuck on the track. But in all dilemas women showed a clear preference for the do-nothing choices and men a tendency towards the sacrificial choices. What is as yet not clear was whether these choices were due to deontological reasoning vs. abrogation or teleological reasoning vs. empathy.
STRESS RESPONSE
As everybody knows, people have a fight-or-flight response to stress, right? Wrong. Shelley Taylor, at UCLA, has discovered that women have a totally different response to stress. Dubbed "tend-and-befriend," women will respond to stress by tending to children and seeking out the companionship of friends, particularly other women. Previous studies of stress, conducted by the same sort of enlightened researchers who will tell you that society does not teach math to girls, only had males as test subjects; fight-or-flight is the male response to stress.
When women are subjected to stress, their body produces increased amounts of a hormone called oxytocin. If motherhood were a chemical, it would be oxytocin. This hormone has numerous effects on the female body. It induces labor, enhances relaxation, moderates any temptation to flee, and promotes bonding and affiliative behavior. It is closely associated with lactation, and seems to play an important part in creating the mother-child bond. It also promotes sexual arousal. Rather than fight-or-flight‹disastrous responses if a mother¹s young child is involved‹oxytocin diverts the action of the sympathetic nervous system to cerebral activities such as awarness of social circumstances.
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Chinese developed the theory of yin and yang, a theory by which the whole world could be understood as the interaction of two fundamental and complementary forces. Yang was identified as positive, advancing, and masculine. Yin, in turn, was negative (not negative as in bad, but simply negative as the complement of positive), yielding, and feminine. Sophisticated theories and philosophical analyses were developed, all based on simple forces recognizable to a young child. Modern academicians have scoffed at this philosophy, calling it ignorant and sexist. But as the recent studies described here show, modern science is slowly vindicating some of the ancient wisdom. Men do, in fact, tend to select hard moral perspectives, just as yang is hard. Women yield to stressors by resorting to a caretaker role, just as yin is yielding. There is a long way to go, but we may yet find that the ancient Chinese were not so ignorant after all.
