1. 26 POST | Issue 3 January/February 2014 Issue 3 January/February 2014 | POST 27
Myth Defied
By Mary Stone
Illustrations by Chris Lyons
Are MEN
and WOMEN
really that
different?
If your partner is of the
opposite sex, chances are
you have blamed his
faults on his gender
more than once.
“That’s such a typical guy thing to do,”
is a common refrain among women. Turns
out, however, it has little to no scientific
basis.In reality, men and women
psychologically are far more similar than
they are different, although anecdotal
and even academic research seem to
indicate the opposite.
Researchers at the University
of Rochester, however, decided to test
the prevailing beliefs by re-analyzing
data from 13 studies that showed
significant psychological differences
between men and women. The
U of R also collected their own
data on a range of psychological
characteristics. Total, they assessed
122 traits from more than 13,000
people and found that from empathy to
academic inclinations, from extroversion
to mating criteria, men and women
psychologically are largely the same.
Instead of dividing into two groups,
researchers showed men and women’s
traits overlap in multiple areas such as their
interest in casual sex or the allure of a
potential mate’s virginity. Psychologically,
they showed, we are not predictably or even
identifiably different. The study, titled: Men
and Women Are From Earth:
Examining the Latent Structure
of Gender was published
last February in the Journal
of Personality and Social
Psychology. It examined qualities
often associated with behavior
in men and women. (It did not
look at abilities or skills.) The
overarching objective was to do
what almost 4,000 other articles on
human sex differences did not show:
whether psychological differences
between men and women are
categorical or a matter of degree.
Characteristics such as assertiveness
and the value people place on close
friendships showed similar scores
between men and women. Because
these traits exist to one extent or
another in everyone, the authors
concluded they should not be used
to label men and women.
Unless you’re OK with being
wrong.
People are inclined to categorize
each other, and gender often is the
first label we attach, explained researcher
Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the
University of Rochester and co-author of
the study. One main reason it is supposed
we do this is economy, psychological
scientists explain. To this end, Reis and his
co-author Bobbi Carothers point to two
other researchers in the field.
In 1991, Susan Tufts Fiske and Shelley E.
Taylor, professors of psychology at Princeton

2. Issue 3 January/February 2014 | POST 29
University and University of California, respectively coined the term
for the tendency to reduce people into categories. They called the mental
shortcuts the “cognitive miser” hypothesis.
The cognitive miser idea describes the way people—even scientific
researchers—organize the bombardment of data they receive every day.
Because it is theorized as impossible to analyze and understand all the
stimuli a person experiences, she ignores information to make quick
conclusions, resorting to labels and past judgments in the process, Fiske
and Taylor explained.
These mental shortcuts help people categorize learned information,
solve problems, and make decisions faster. But while people conserve
their cognitive resources by dichotomizing, it usually comes at the
expense of truth.
“To the extent that people are much of the time cognitive
misers, they simply take well-worn shortcuts because they cannot
always deal with other people in all their complexity,” Fiske and
Taylor wrote in the updated version of their book Social Cognition
published in 2013.
In the U of R’s study, Reis and Carothers wrote:
“Sex is one of the most readily observed human traits, it
forms an easy and common basis for categorizing
other persons. As a result, because other qualities
tend to be accommodated to accessible categories,
and because men and women do differ in myriad
ways, category-based generalizations maximize
the difference between the sexes while minimizing
differences within them.” In a Nov. 2010 article
by Fiske in Perspectives on Psychological Science,
she wrote that people often do not consider that
even positive characteristics attributed to a
sex can be damaging.
“For example, by saying women are so
communal, and regarding it as a great virtue,
there are expectations that these attributes apply
to all women, which is not true. Moreover, this
ambivalence turns out to be more general than just
gender relations,” Fiske wrote.
Past judgments affect our interactions every day, moment to
moment, without our even knowing it.
“When people encounter another person or group, the first
questions people ask are ‘Are they on my side or not? Are they friend
or foe?’ And if they are a friend, then they are warm, trustworthy,
and sincere. But if they are a foe, they are cold, untrustworthy,
and callous,” Fiske wrote.Unlike the advice commonly espoused in
pop psychology books, men and women do not think about their
relationship that differently, Reis and Carothers wrote. The best
evidence of that, they note, is that gay and lesbian relationships often
have the same problems relating to each other that heterosexual
couples do. The conclusion is that a person’s sex is not the reason
for couples’ differences. It’s their characters.
Concluding the problem is a person’s gender not only misinforms
the partner with the complaint, it can keep the other partner from
exploring change.
The assumption that there are sex differences entitles people to
believe that those characteristics are genetic and as such unchangeable,
Reis and Carothers wrote last April in a New York Times story titled:
The Tangle of the Sexes.
“Consider a marital spat in which she accuses him of being
emotionally withdrawn while he indicts her for being demanding,” they
wrote.“In a gender-categorical world, the argument can quickly devolve
to ‘You’re acting like a typical (man/woman)!’ Asking a partner to change,
in this binary world, is expecting him or her to go against the natural
tendency of his or her category—a very tall order.
“The alternative, a dimensional perspective, ascribes behavior to
individuals, as one of their various personal qualities,” Reis and
Carothers wrote. “It is much easier to imagine
how change might take place.”To determine
if gender differences were dimensional or
categorical, Reis and Carothers reopened
previous studies on what are considered
the ‘big five’ personality traits: extroversion,
openness, agreeableness, emotional stability,
and conscientiousness. Using three separate
statistical procedures, the authors searched for
evidence of attributes that could reliably categorize a person as male or
female.
Some men, they found, possess characteristics that societally are
more ascribed to women, such as thoughtfulness, while some women
do not express that quality at all. Even if one were to examine a list that
measures a full range of one’s psychological characteristics, such as their
capacity for empathy or aggression, there is no reliable way to conclude
the person’s gender from the list alone.
All of this is not to say that there are not important differences
between the sexes. They are many, the authors confirmed, they’re just
not associated to character. Instead, they have more to do with
preferences, activities, self-care, physical strength, anatomy.
In these cases gender, the authors explained, can be a reliable
predictor for interest in stereotypic activities, such as women’s affinities
for scrapbooking and cosmetics and men’s interests in boxing, watching
pornography or playing video games.
But for character, their psychological traits such as fear of success
or empathy, men’s and women’s scores did not cluster at one end
of the spectrum as they did with height, for example. Instead, their
psychological traits overlap, with very few exceptions.
Reis, the study’s co-author, is an expert in the field
of relationship research.
In 2012 he received the Distinguished Career Award
from the International Association for Relationship
Research.
Reis, who early in his career was credited with
applying complex statistics to social psychology,
joined the University of Rochester in 1974. He
is responsible for helping to launch the field of
relationship science, advancing theories such as
intimacy theory: now a leading psychological
model of relationships.
He has written or edited seven books and published
more than 170 studies and articles. Reis’ co-author
Bobbi Carothers completed the study as part of her
doctoral dissertation at University of Rochester.
She now is a senior data analyst for the Center for
Public Health System Science at Washington University in St. Louis.
One of the implications of categorizing our partners is limiting them,
Reis explains.
“Having gender stereotypes hinders people from looking at their
partner as an individual. They may also discourage people from pursuing
certain kinds of goals. When psychological and intellectual tendencies
are seen as defining characteristics, they are more likely to be assumed
to be innate and immutable. Why bother to try to change?”
Carothers and Reis say their findings support the “gender similarities
hypothesis” put forth by University of Wisconsin psychologist Janet Hyde.
Using different methods, Hyde also challenged ‘overinflated claims of
gender differences’ with analyses of psychology studies, demonstrating that
males and females are similar on most psychological variables. The results
were not a surprise for Carothers, who was raised by physical education
teachers. The self-described tomboy grew up knowing stereotypes did
not apply to her. That experience, she says, fueled a lifelong interest into
the biological basis of behavior. In graduate school she realized she could
apply her skills with statistics to exploring sex differences.
Reis and Carothers recognize that on average there may be gender
differences in people, but not “consistently and inflexibly”
gender-typed individuals. The belief that men and women are
fundamentally different, they note, is endemic in media, and
serves to bolster the idea that men and women are separate
human kinds.
In reality, the authors showed, sex-based differences
exist on a continuum; they manifest to one extent or
another, and this they postulate is due in part to our
modern culture. (The questionnaires came primarily
from psychology students at U.S. universities.)
Reis and Carothers note it is entirely possible
that these findings would have been very different in
previous generations, in other cultures, and in other parts
of the world, where traditionally male-identified traits
are discouraged in women.
Right now, however, American men and
women are not that different anymore, even if we
persist in ignoring it.
0
20
40
60
80
STRENGHT
MEN
WOMEN
OVERLAP
On physical characteristics
men and women fall into
separate groups with very
little overlap. The physical
strength graph shows
statistical analysis of the
scores for the National
Collegiate Athletic
Association’s long jump,
high jump, and javelin
throw competitions.
5% 15% 25% 35% 45% 55% 65% 85%75% 95%
28 POST | Issue 3 January/February 2014 Chris Lyons
0
35
70
105
145
175
MASCULINITY-ASSERTIVENESS
MEN
WOMEN
OVERLAP
For most psychological
attributes, however, including
masculine attitudes, there
is extensive variability
within each sex and overlap
between the sexes.
The masculinity-assertive-
ness graph is based on
self-reported measures
of competitiveness, decisive-
ness, sense of superiority,
persistence, confidence,
and the ability to stand
up under pressure.
5% 15% 25% 35% 45% 55% 65% 85%75% 95%