Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Truth about Boys and Girls

A Scientific American Mind article says:
Boys and girls are different, but most psychological sex differences are not especially large. For example, gaps in intellectual performance, empathy and even most types of aggression are generally much narrower than the disparity in adult height, in which the average man is taller than 99 percent of women. ...

Most sex differences start out small -— as mere biases in temperament and play style -— but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture, including all the tea parties, wrestling matches, playground capers and cafeteria dramas that dominate boys’ or girls’ existence.
The article has some data on male-female differences, but does not really have any evidence that the differences are amplified by culture. It is possible for innate differences to become more significant over time. After all, the height differences increase with age, and that is not from culture.

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