Sex differences don’t disappear as a country’s equality develops—sometimes, they become stronger

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**** differences don’t disappear as a country’s equality develops—sometimes, they become stronger

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The more gender equal a society is,

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men and women will be, adopting more similar interests, personality traits and behavioral patterns. Or so many people seem to believe.

Statements like this might sound like truisms, but science shows reality may be more complicated.

Several studies have found that some psychological **** differences, such as

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, are larger in more gender-equal countries. The same goes for countries that are more educated, prosperous and otherwise have better living conditions. This has become known as the gender-equality paradox.

Until recently, it was unclear how widespread this pattern might be. My team, which included research assistant Kare Hedebrant, tried to address that in a

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, where we investigated which psychological **** differences are associated with living conditions and, if so, how.

The study covered a range of themes, from personality and cognitive functions to sexting and circadian rhythm. Our study focused on mostly western countries but used some data from other countries such as India and Kenya.

We reviewed 54 articles that analyze the relationship between magnitudes of psychological **** differences and country-level indicators of living conditions. We also used data from 27 meta-analyses (reviews of previous research) of psychological **** differences and conducted new analyses to determine associations between **** differences and national economy, education, health, gender equality and more.

**** differences

Each study used data from at least five countries, usually spanning several decades.

We grouped the many psychological dimensions covered by these studies into six categories: personal characteristics, cognition, interpersonal relations, emotion, academic preferences (such as a pull towards science, technology, engineering and math) and morals and values.

Our findings paint a complex picture, showing that variation in psychological **** difference did not follow a uniform pattern. In countries with better living conditions, males and females are more alike in some regards and more different in others.

For example, differences in personality characteristics were frequently found to be larger in countries with better living conditions. This includes traits such as extroversion, agreeableness and altruism, which research seems to show are more strongly associated with women. The same was true for **** differences in some dimensions of emotion, specifically negative emotions in which females tend to score higher, such as shame.

There were also exceptions to the gender-equality paradox. **** differences in ******* behavior, like engaging in casual ****, were consistently found to be smaller in countries with better living conditions. This is probably because women in these countries, where there are more permissive norms, have better access to contraceptives.

A complicated phenomenon

For cognitive functions, **** differences were sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in countries with better living conditions. Interestingly, the **** differences were larger in cognitive domains where women have strengths.

For instance, episodic memory (memory for experienced events) and verbal ability, where females typically do better than males, saw larger **** differences as living conditions improved. Females got better at episodic memory when they had better living conditions. By contrast, **** differences in semantic memory (memory for facts) and mathematical ability, where males tend to do better, decreased when living conditions improved.

This suggests that, when it comes to cognitive abilities, females benefit more than males from improvements in living conditions. The performance gap increases in domains where females have an advantage and closes in domains where males are ahead.

Not all psychological **** differences were associated with living conditions in the same way. So, can we say that there is a gender-equality paradox? Yes, to some extent, since more **** differences grew, rather than decreased, in countries with better living conditions.

In most cases, however, psychological **** difference magnitudes were not significantly associated with living conditions. This suggests that, in general, psychological **** differences are not greatly affected by living conditions but seem instead quite stable. For instance, research often finds females

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at school across different subjects. It’s also common for researcher to find males have

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. But neither seems to be affected by living conditions.

Even in cases where the magnitude of **** differences did vary in relation to living conditions, the pattern of male and female advantages usually remained the same. So, for example, though the female advantage over males in episodic memory ability is greater in some countries than others, females outperform males in almost all countries.

In summary, we found little support for the idea that psychological **** differences will vanish as societies develop. Policymakers probably cannot rely on that if they hope to achieve equal distributions of men and women in different professions. Instead, it appears that the dominant feature of psychological **** differences is their robustness in the face of social change.

Provided by
The Conversation

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**** differences don’t disappear as a country’s equality develops—sometimes, they become stronger (2024, April 22)
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