This just in: psychological studies find that differences between men and women are, for the most part, negligible. This includes in areas commonly considered to be gendered, such as communications, spatial reasoning and assertiveness.
Dr Hyde said gender differences accounted for either no or a very small effect for most of the psychological variables examined. She said only throwing distance and physical aggression showed marked gender differences.
It turns out that there are stereotypical male and female behaviours -- but they disappear as soon as the actor is not identified by sex:
Dr Hyde highlighted one study where participants were told that they were not identified as male or female nor wore any identification, which led to neither sex conforming to a stereotyped image when given the opportunity to act aggressively.
They actually did the opposite to what was expected - they did not stick to the stereotype of aggressive males and passive females.

Posted by: Jim | http:// | Mon Sep 19 21:28:25 2005

That'll piss off Pinker...

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Mon Sep 19 23:47:48 2005

I don't recall Pinker being committed to men and women having biologically different psychologies to that extent; only to humanity not being a blank slate, which this doesn't say it is. It just says that most of what's on the slate doesn't vary substantially by sex.

I imagine Malcolm Gladwell will be pleased, though.

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