Differences in How Men and Women Think and Act

BEHAVIOR DIFFERENCES -

We often hear gender stereotypes of what girls and boys like to do. Boys like trucks, and girls like dolls. At the time, it seemed clear to Diane Halpern, Ph.D., past president of the American Psychological Association, that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were caused by socialization practices, bias, prejudice, and mistakes in the research,,, but after reviewing a pile of journal articles and books, she changed her mind" (Halpern).

Additionally, in her preeminent academic text, Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, it was found that research done on rhesus monkeys was too diverse with sex-based differences in comparison to humans. The boys strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas the girls preferred soft and plush toys to play with.

She further states, "It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls nine to seventeen months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys" (Halpern).

I find this interesting because there is often talk about how society "made boys that way", or that both girls and boys are forced to be interested in those things. Although a partial statement of that may be true, it is not true for the majority of boys and girls. Her findings have all been replicated by her and other researchers. 

COORDINATION AND MEMORY -

Women also did best in most of the verbal abilities and activities. They also outperformed men in tests of fine-motor coordination and perceptual speed. On the other hand, men, on average, can more easily juggle items in working memory. They frequently have greater visuospatial skills.

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It has been noted since an early age that "Infant girls respond more readily to faces and begin talking earlier. Boys react earlier in infancy to experimentally induced perceptual discrepancies in their visual environment. In adulthood, women remain more oriented to faces, and men to things" (Goldman, Halper). It also continues to state that men see the overall image, and women see detail closely.

Furthermore, "Navigation studies in both humans and rats show that females of both species tend to rely on landmarks, while males more typically rely on “dead reckoning”: calculating one’s position by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than using landmarks” (Stanford Medicine Magazine).

This adds to the findings and research that we talked about in class. Men often see things as more direction based--like go southeast, and then turn left... whereas women are more likely to remember landmarks and would say something more like, after you see Wendy's go straight for a little more and then turn on the same street as the dairy farm.

Ignoring these behavior differences ignores the shocking cognitive and neuro­psychiatric disorders in which men and women are unbalanced, that--

• Women are twice as likely as men to experience clinical depression in their lifetimes. 
• Women are twice as likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. 
• Men are twice as likely to become alcoholic or drug-dependent. 
• Men are 40 percent more likely to develop schizophrenia. 
• Boys’ dyslexia rate is perhaps 10 times that of girls, and they are four or five times as likely to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

This is quite shocking. The differences are very clear in how men's and women's behaviors are different--especially based on cognitive information and research.

THE BRAIN -

The two hemispheres of a woman’s brain talk to each other more than a man does. In a 2014 study, the University of Pennsylvania researchers imaged about 1000 male and female youth — and "found that the females’ brains consistently showed more strongly coordinated activity between hemispheres, while the males’ brain activity was more tightly coordinated within local brain regions" (Goldman).

This reminded me of the YouTube video we reviewed in "Famly Relations" class, titled “Men’s Brains, Women’s Brains by Mark Gungor. He says that men's minds are made up of little ‘boxes’, and women’s brains are made up of ‘wires’.

CONCLUSION -

It is crucial to appreciate and be aware of the differences between males and women. Each is different and given special abilities to attract and add to one another.

 

SOURCES:

How men's and women's brains are different | Stanford Medicine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoqpjOZxf2M