{"id":3667,"date":"2013-02-07T13:53:35","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T12:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3667"},"modified":"2013-02-07T13:53:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T12:53:53","slug":"3667","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2013\/02\/3667\/","title":{"rendered":"Paper: Men and Women Are From Earth: Examining the Latent Structure of Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Men and women are from Earth Examining the latent structure of gender.<\/a><\/p>\n

Understanding Dimensions and Taxa
\nOne reason why the underlying nature of gender differences has
\nbeen difficult to address is that although biological sex is clearly a
\ncategorical variable, the variables commonly of interest to re-
\nsearchers and laypersons alike tend to be dimensional (e.g., mas-
\nculinity, femininity, school achievement, depression, aggression),
\nvarying along a continuum. The statement that men are more
\naggressive than women, for example, implicitly assumes that there
\nis one group of people who are high in aggression (men) and
\nanother group of people who are low in aggression (women). This
\nassumption treats an observed mean difference between men and
\nwomen as a special kind of category called a taxon. Examples of
\ntaxa include animal species (gophers vs. chipmunks), certain phys-
\nical illnesses (e.g., one either has meningitis or not), and biological
\nsex.<\/p>\n

no it doesnt. “men are more aggressive than women” has what logicians call a missing quantifier, meaning that one has to infer it from context. in this case it is pretty clear that the meant quantifier is “usually” or “typically”, which makes this sentence equivalent in meaning with “the average aggressiveness of men is higher than the ditto of women”. another quantifier cud be “all”, but no one seriously thinks that all men are more aggressive than all women. there is a difference in the average. i think that most people agree with this.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Although gender differences on average are not under dispute,
\nthe idea of consistently and inflexibly gender-typed individuals is.
\nThat is, there are not two distinct genders, but instead there are
\nlinear gradations of variables associated with sex, such as mascu-
\nlinity or intimacy, all of which are continuous (like most social,
\npsychological, and individual difference variables). Thus, it will be
\nimportant to think of these variables as continuous dimensions that
\npeople possess to some extent, and that may be related to sex,
\namong whatever other predictors there may be. Of course, the term
\nsex differences is still completely reasonable. In a dimensional
\nmodel, differences between men and women reflect all the causal
\nvariables known to be associated with sex, including both nature
\nand nurture. But at least with regard to the kinds of variables
\nstudied in this research, grouping into \u201cmale\u201d and \u201cfemale\u201d cate-
\ngories indicates overlapping continuous distributions rather than
\nnatural kinds.<\/p>\n

they seem confused. it does not follow that genders are not distinct just becus they indicators of the genders are dimensional rather than taxonomic. altho one cud think of the personality of people as being on a continuum from archtypical male to archtypical female.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

This research also adds further evidence to the current debate
\nabout whether it is more profitable to focus this literature on
\ngender differences or gender similarities (Hyde, 2005). \u201cThe gen-
\nder similarities hypothesis states, instead, that males and females
\nare alike on most\u2014but not all\u2014psychological variables\u201d (Hyde,
\n2005, p. 590). Our research shows, moreover, that even those
\nvariables on which males and females are not alike may be
\nevidence of variations along a continuous dimension rather than
\ncategorical, and as Hyde terms them, \u201coverinflated claims of
\ngender differences\u201d (Hyde, 2005, p. 590). Clearly, if differences
\nbetween men and women are conceptualized as variations along a
\ncontinuum, there is little reason to reify these differences with the
\nsorts of extremities typically mentioned. Instead, these differences
\nwould be seen as reflecting all the influences that are brought to
\nbear on an individual\u2019s growth, development, and experience, and
\nwould be relatively amenable to modification.<\/p>\n

no such thing follows. gender differences can be small with lots of overlapping variation and still be 100% genetic, and thus not changeable with the usual socialization tools.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

If gender is dimensional, why do categorical stereotypes of men
\nand women persist in everyday life? Although our research does
\nnot speak to this issue, several explanations seem relevant. One
\nreason is that people tend to think categorically (Medin, 1989), or
\nas Fiske (2010) put it, referring to both laypeople and researchers,
\n\u201cwe love dichotomies\u201d (p. 689). People use easily accessible
\ncategories to help organize the abundance of information that the
\nsocial world presents, a mental shortcut that has come to be known
\nas the \u201ccognitive miser\u201d hypothesis (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Be-
\ncause sex is one of the most readily observed human traits, it forms
\nan easy and common basis for categorizing other persons. As a
\nresult, because other qualities tend to be accommodated to acces-
\nsible categories, and because men and women do differ in myriad
\nways, category-based generalizations maximize the difference be-
\ntween the sexes while minimizing differences within them (e.g.,
\nFiske & Neuberg, 1990; Taylor et al., 1978). Furthermore, as
\nKrueger, Hasman, Acevedo, and Villano (2003) showed, it may be
\nrational to accentuate intergroup differences whenever these dif-
\nferences are easy to learn, fairly accurate, and helpful for action.<\/p>\n

there are patterns in experience and in nature, and one sign of intelligence is to spot those patterns and use them to make decisions. stereotypes are useful for this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

It may be fruitful to consider how our findings are bound to the
\ncultural and historical context within which the data were col-
\nlected. With a few exceptions, most of these data were collected
\nfrom young Americans in the last quarter of the 20th century. This
\nis a time and setting in which differences between men and women
\nwere shrinking, reflecting societal, economic, and educational
\ncircumstances that contributed to the increasing liberalization of
\ngender roles (Brooks & Bolzendahl, 2004). Indeed, it seems likely
\nthat were we to examine new data sets collected in 2012, they
\nwould, if anything, be even more likely to be dimensional. This
\npoint suggests two important implications. First, to the extent that
\nour data sets are outdated, they should have been more likely to
\nreveal a taxonic structure (which they did not), making our support
\nfor dimensionality more compelling. Second, if suitable data sets
\ncan be found, historical comparisons of underlying structures may
\nprove revealing of the impact of societal trends.<\/p>\n

some things are shrinking, others are apparently increasing with increasing HDI. see http:\/\/roseproject.no\/?page_id=39<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

in a happy coincidence, i recently learned about http:\/\/www.okstereotype.me\/, which is a site that guesses (stereotypes) about various things from one’s profile text on dating sites. they must have data that can create a bayesian probability distribution like those in the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men and women are from Earth Examining the latent structure of gender. Understanding Dimensions and Taxa One reason why the underlying nature of gender differences has been difficult to address is that although biological sex is clearly a categorical variable, the variables commonly of interest to re- searchers and laypersons alike tend to be dimensional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1839,1624,1653],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychometics","category-evolutionary-psychology","category-psychology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3670,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions\/3670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}