The XX Factor: What women really think.

A Little Nature Here, A Little Nurture There

Slate's William Saletan returns for a second guest post on female sexuality:

Hey, no fair with the complications, Emily! I had a nice, simple thesis that men and women were different, and you had to go fuzz it up with all your nuance and stuff. But, heck, I’m a gentleman. You took my bait; I’ll take yours.

I can’t rehash all the research on sex patterns in aggression, responsiveness, and social editing in this space or without putting everyone to sleep. Plus, why trust my spin? Here are abstracts and write-ups from a few recent studies, which can be interpreted in various ways. A little nature here, a little nurture there. Have at it.

1. Do angry men get noticed?
(Current Biology, 2006)

Angry male faces were detected significantly more rapidly by male than female observers. … Our findings are consistent with the notion of a perceptual system in both males and females that has evolved to rapidly detect aggression in males.

In humans, evolution has resulted in marked differentiation between males and females, including differences in the structural and functional organization of the brain. These differences are reflected in patterns of cognitive and behavioural abilities. For example, females tend to perform better than males at fine motor and perceptual discrimination tasks, whereas males are better at route-finding tasks. Males are also physically larger and more aggressive than females, and so more likely to pose a physical threat. Such physical differences between the sexes may in turn have shaped the cognitive processes involved in detecting threatening behaviour in others. Early detection of an angry facial expression, for example, might reduce the likelihood of an injurious or potentially fatal confrontation. … Recent evidence suggests that females are better than males at recognizing non-threatening facial expressions such as happiness or sadness.

2. Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others
(Nature, 2006)

We engaged male and female volunteers in an economic game, in which two confederates played fairly or unfairly, and then measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while these same volunteers observed the confederates receiving pain. Both sexes exhibited empathy-related activation in pain-related brain areas … towards fair players. However, these empathy-related responses were significantly reduced in males when observing an unfair person receiving pain. This effect was accompanied by increased activation in reward-related areas, correlated with an expressed desire for revenge.

3. Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children
(Hormones and Behavior, 2008)

Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. … The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialization. We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.

(More on the study here: The animals were offered two categories of toys— ones with wheels such as wagons and other vehicles, and various dolls and cuddly toys.)

4. Sex differences in the development of termite-fishing skills in the wild chimpanzees
(Animal Behavior, 2005)

[T]he techniques of female offspring closely resembled those of their mothers whereas the techniques of male offspring did not, suggesting that the process by which termite fishing is learned differs for male and female chimpanzees.

(More on the study here: By the first day, adult females were getting at the mustard and a young female watched carefully and began to pick up the skills, she said. Two young males did not fare as well—one simply sat next to his mother and tried to steal some mustard from her, Dr. Lonsdorf said. The behavior of both sexes may seem familiar to many parents, she said, adding, "The sex differences we found in the chimps mimic some of the findings from the human child development literature." She pointed out, however, that at least in the case of chimps, each is doing something important, since the males' play is practice for later dominance behavior.)