Gender Differences Found to be Caused Mainly by Social Expectations and Not Genetics

Source: www.scilogs.com

Although there are several differences between males and females genetically, social expectations and stereotypes seem to have a larger impact on why boys become "manly" and girls become "lady-like."

Lise Eliot, in her article in Scientific American, stated that "sex differences that grow larger through childhood are likely shaped by social learning, a consequence of the very different lifestyle, culture, and training that boys and girls experience in every human society."  

Although some differences are innate, most are learned and the gap between genders increases with age.  Eliot states that sex "differences in empathy emerge in infancy and persist throughout development, though the gap between adult women and men is larger than between girls and boys."

Another point that Eliot makes in her article is that "experiences change our brains."  Females and males start out their lives on very similar, clean slates.  As they grow and experience new things and have new interactions, however, they learn how they are expected to act according to their gender, such as what toys they should play with, or later on in adolescent years, what fields they should pursue.  

It is well known that females are stereotypically said to be less analytical, and therefore not as successful in the mathematics and sciences.  This is why there are less women in those fields; girls are told they will not be good at something at a young age, and therefore they feel no need to pursue it.


Social norms presented by things like ads, parenting, and peer interactions cause differences in the way each respective gender acts and in what they become during and after childhood.

Parents have a massive effect on their children, as well as what they eventually become.  Parents tend to discourage their children from acting like their opposite gender is stereotypically supposed to act in any way.

"[B]oys and girls are socialized and encouraged to play with different types of toys by their parents, peers, and the 'society,'" stated Brett Stevens in his article, "Are Gender Differences Innate or Learned?"

Whether a child innately wants a toy designed for their gender or the other, they are immediately taught what they should play with based on their sex.  These expectations are learned from parents, television commercials and other forms of advertisements, and their peers.

When asked if she has noticed less confidence in females than males in the classroom, Ellen Baumann, a graduate student in the Counseling Psychology Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland, said that "there's a lot of individual difference," but she has not had much experience with a significant difference between the genders.

Asking one's gender before math test results in lower scores for females and higher scores for males.


In a study by Lawrence J. Stricker, a control group of high school students took an AP Calculus test without being asked anything about their gender before the test; they were only asked afterwards.  The females and males in this group performed very similarly; females performed, on average, one point better than the males. 

Source: www.eta.org

However, in the other group of participants, the students were inquired their gender before taking the test.  The results changed significantly from the control group's results.  Females scored an average of four points less than males, who scored better than they did in the control group.

The reasoning for this significant difference is that when each gender is reminded of what fields they are thought and expected to be either poor or skilled in, their confidence levels follow suit.  

In this study, when asked their gender, females were reminded that all their lives they have learned that males are supposed to be better at math and science.  Therefore, the females perform worse than they would have without acknowledging this assumption because their confidence levels had then dropped drastically.

Males, on the other hand, are benefited by this inquiry.  They are reminded that they are stereotypically superior in this subject and are expected to excel and so they do.  Their confidence levels rise and the males perform better than if they had without the reminder that they are "supposed" to score better than females on the exam.

Many other studies have also proven that "negative stereotypes hinder women's athletic and cognitive performance on a range of tests," according to an article by Jalees Rehman called, "'She's strong for a girl': The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women."

When asked how the perception that males are more competent than females could be prevented, Baumann said she thinks that "awareness about the research that's being done is really important."

Transgender Jan Morris claims that she "was assumed to be incompetent" and found that she started feeling more incompetent because of this assumption once she transitioned into a female.

In Cordelia Fine's book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, Fine interviews a male-to-female transsexual named Jan Morris.  Morris stated in the book, "'The more I was was treated as a woman, the more woman I became.  I adapted willy-nilly.  If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming.  If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I found it so myself.'"

Expectations of how certain people should act, as well as stereotypes in general, affect how those respective people do end up behaving.  The decision to behave in the way others expect a person to is not necessarily a conscious one.  The experiences in which these expectations are revealed mold a person's brain into one that will conform to these expectations.

Fine also addresses the fact that although "'women, on average, do not appear to have more empathetic ability than men, there is compelling evidence that women will display [more empathy] than men when their empathic motivation is engaged by situational cues that remind them that they, as women, are expected to excel at empathy-related tasks."

Baumann stated, "Sometimes the discrimination can be experienced unconsciously" since "a lot of discrimination is not conscious" to begin with, when asked whether she has ever felt discriminated against because of her gender.

Although women are not found to be more empathetic than men on a genetic level, the perception that women should be more empathetic makes them that way.


Cordelia Fine stated that "we can't separate people's empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation.  The salience of cultural expectations about gender and empathizing interacts with a mind that knows to which gender it belongs."

In other words, the reason that women tend to be more empathetic than men is mainly because they are aware of the fact that they are women, and men are aware of the fact that they are men.  There is no way to tell if the fact that empathy is more evident in females than males is truly due to genetics because society has impacted each person with respect to their gender.

Women are typically more empathetic because they have been taught their entire lives that that is what they should be, and what they need to be.  Men are typically less empathetic because it is thought to be a womanly trait, and men are taught to be anything but womanly.

When asked whether she thought gender differences were caused more by genetics or social expectations and stereotypes, Baumann said that "most psychologists agree that it's a little bit of both."

Women are not the only ones subject to the threat of stereotypes.

Although women tend to be the main topic of conversation whenever gender stereotyping is brought up, men are not free from these expectations either.

For example, boys and men are taught that they need to be tall and muscular in order to be considered "manly."  This stems partly from the fact that dolls and action figures targeted to young boys are inaccurately and impossibly muscular and thin.

Source: www.johnriviello.com

Toys that resemble figures like Batman or G.I. Joe give young boys unrealistic goals for what they think their bodies should look like.  Wide chests, massive biceps, and minuscule waists are portrayed in many action figures today.

Dolls marketed towards girls affect their eventual body image as well.  If a Barbie doll were a real person, she would not even be able to stand because of her impossible body proportions.

In an article by Daniel Roberts, he states, "Children today are fed images of what it means to be manly or to be beautiful, before they even have the chance to go online or watch models pose for magazines."

More commonly discussed issues relating to body image are magazines that use Photoshop on their models in order to sexualize them and make them look what is thought to be more attractive, even though the look achieved is unobtainable in real life.

However, males and females are taught what is considered attractive at a much younger age than adolescence.  Toys send the wrong message that boys are expected to grow up to look like G.I. Joe and girls are supposed to end up looking like Barbie.

These expectations are only affirmed by the aforementioned Photoshopped models in magazines who only confirm their beliefs that women should be unhealthily thin and disproportional, and men should be unrealistically chiseled and thin as well.

Inquiring Gender Before Math Test Results in Worse Performance in Females and Improved Performance in Males

Source: www.eta.org

As Cordelia Fine puts it in her book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, “When the environment makes gender salient, there is a ripple effect on the mind. We start to think of ourselves in terms of our gender, and stereotypes and social expectations become more prominent in the mind. This can change self-perception, alter interests, debilitate or enhance ability, and trigger unintentional discrimination. In other words, the social context influences who you are, how you think, and what you do. And these thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors of yours, in turn, become part of the social context.” 

“‘Although women, on average, do not appear to have more empathic ability than men, there is compelling evidence that women will display greater accuracy than men when their empathic motivation is engaged by situational cues that remind them that they, as women, are expected to excel at empathy-related tasks,’…The take home message of these studies is that we can’t separate people’s empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation. The salience of cultural expectations about gender and empathizing interacts with a mind that knows to which gender it belongs” (Fine).

“Sex differences in empathy emerge in infancy and persist throughout development, though the gap between adult women and men is larger than between girls and boys,” (Eliot).  This shows that differences in gender may be innate, but these differences are exaggerated and the gap is widened with age.  This means that society is forcing these ideals onto each gender of how they are supposed to behave, so they follow their respective social norm.

Gender Differences Found to be Caused Mainly by Social Expectations and Not Genetics

Women are not the only ones subject to the threat of stereotypes.

Women are perceived as being less analytical, and men are perceived as being less empathetic and caring.

Experiments prove that social norms presented by things like ads and parenting cause differences in confidence and therefore performance among genders.

Experiment about math test with boys vs. girls.

Control group has girls and boys take the test after being told that both genders typically perform the same; they score equally as well.

Other group has girls and boys take the test after being told that boys typically perform better than girls; girls perform significantly worse.

Video Interview Here:
Have you noticed less confidence in females than males in the classroom?
How do you think we can prevent the perception that males are more competent than females?

Transgender Jan Morris claims that she "was assumed to be incompetent" and found that she started feeling more incompetent because of this assumption once she transitioned into a female.

More quotes from Jan Morris

Discuss the difference between how each gender is treated by each gender.

It is not just men treating women poorly--women perceive other women as less capable as well.

Although women are not found to be more empathetic than men on a genetic level, the perception that women should be more empathetic makes them that way.

People turn into their stereotypes if they are expected to behave in a certain way.

"The take-home message of these studies is that we can't separate people's empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation. The salience of cultural expectations about gender and empathizing interacts with a mind that knows to which gender it belongs" (Delusion of Gender).

U.S. Citizens Have Had an Increasing Perception of Bias in the Media Since 1985

Higher Self Evaluation of Physical Attractiveness in College Students Decreases Anticipated Usefulness of Smartphone Fitness Apps

More and more college students are beginning to use fitness/health apps on their smartphones everyday.  The apps can be used to track physical activity or food intake, which helps students to reach their health goals.

Source: www.thebrookeeper.com

In a study on the effects of body image on perceived usefulness of fitness apps, it was found that college students with an average age of 23 were more likely to believe fitness apps to be useful if they themselves had lower self-esteem.  This low self-esteem could be attributed to their physical appearance and/or their perception of their physical ability.

This may seem counter-intuitive at first given that it seems fitness apps' most frequent users would be people who tend to workout on a regular basis, and are therefore fairly fit.  However, the study found that when a student is lacking confidence in their appearance or physical ability, she will more than likely believe the app has more potential to help her than if she were already confident in her abilities.  In that case, the app cannot do much more for the student—she is already happy with where she is.

In this study by Jaehee Cho and Erin Lee, who both have PhDs from South Korean universities, 294 students were given an online survey that evaluated their self image and whether or not they thought that several different fitness apps would be of any use to them on a 5-point scale.  It was also noted that in South Korea, where the study took place, 73% of Korean adults owned a smartphone at the time of the study.

Source: www.mobihealthnews.com

Samantha Kelly claims in her article on Mashable that fitness/health apps are being newly downloaded 87% faster than any other type of smartphone app.  She also notes that more women tend to use health apps than men.

Another study performed by the University of Agder strove to discover what effect physical activity has on the physical self-perception of 15-year-olds.  A total of 1839 students from 12 different schools in Norway participated in the study.  A slight flaw in the study was that some of the males' physical appearances and abilities actually improved along the course of the study, which caused an obvious increase in self-perception.  There was no apparent difference in the females, however.

The purpose of the study was to find a way to improve the self esteem of adolescents.  Young teenagers are typically at a peak of self-consciousness since they are going through so many changes emotionally, physically, and socially.  It is crucial to find ways to help them through this stage of their life, and if the answer is physical activity, then that may be part of the cause of the recent spike in installations of fitness apps, considering teenagers tend to find any excuse to put their smartphone to good use.

Physical self-esteem incorporates both perceived physical appearance and perceived athletic ability.  Not only are these perceptions important for adolescents' overall self-esteem, but they are crucial for their psychological well-being as well.  Tommy Haugen, Yngvar Ommundsen, and Stephen Seiler claim in this study that "[e]xercise and training are proposed to reduce appearance dissatisfaction and enhance physical self-perception."

A separate study "found that cardiovascular endurance was positively correlated to athletic competence but not to physical appearance in a small sample of early adolescent girls."  It is also generally assumed that strength and aerobic training are the two most important types of exercises to promote better self-esteem and self-image.

Source: www.greatist.com

In the experiment, the participants were profiled before the workouts to determine their perceptions of their preexisting physical abilities, as well as their perceptions of their appearances in general and whether they were satisfied with each.  They were to grade themselves on a 4-point scale of the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with each statement.  

Each participant of the study had to perform five physical fitness tests to get a preliminary indication of the physical ability of each participant.  As predicted, BMI was the most effective at determining the perceived physical appearance levels of both males and females.  If a student's BMI were high, then the student would typically report having a low perceived physical appearance, and vice-versa.  The results also suggested that "physical activity can develop physical competencies and skills, which in turn are associated with increase in self-esteem and confidence."  

Fitness and health apps are meant to encourage adolescents and adults of all ages to be more physically active and to eat in a more healthy manner.  Since exercising more often and eating better correlate with a healthier over-all mindset and improved self-image, then maybe fitness and health apps are the answer to many issues we have with adolescents in the modern day.  Low self-esteem and depression can be diminished simply by downloading a smartphone app and putting it to use.

Psychologist Dr. Dass-Brailsford Claims that Racism is Due Mainly to Subconscious Racial Biases

Many of the people that would see this post on my social media went to the Trevor Noah comedy show last night.  Trevor addressed the issue of racism constantly throughout his performance, so the topic remains on everyone's mind.  I found this article interesting because of the prevalence of having seen Trevor's show the night before, and I think many others would as well.

Test Post

Here is a link.