The Female & Male Psyche

[Anatta]

Kia Ora,

Interesting article...

From a 2008 article Psychology Today "The Scientific Fundamentalist"

Research in evolutionary psychology and related fields has uncovered the distinct ways that men's minds and women's minds operate.

The male brain is characterized by systemizing tendencies (to use Baron-Cohen's term) and mechanistic thinking (to use Crespi and Badcock's term). "Systemizing" is the drive to analyze, explore, and construct a system. The systemizer intuitively figures out how things work, or extracts the underlying rules that govern the behavior of a system. The purpose of this is to understand and predict the system, or to invent a new one.

In contrast, the female brain is characterized by empathizing tendencies (to use Baron-Cohen's term) or mentalistic thinking (to use Crespi and Badcock's term). "Empathizing" is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion. Empathizing occurs when we feel an appropriate emotional reaction in response to the other person's emotions. The purpose of this is to understand another person, to predict his or her behavior, and to connect or resonate with him or her emotionally.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/male-brain-vs-female-brain-i

The male brain tends toward systemizing and mechanistic thinking, treating other people as if they were logical systems or machines. If you take this tendency to an extreme, you would treat everyone as if they were machines without minds or feelings. That, according to Baron-Cohen, is the essence of autism, which he calls "mindblindness." Mindblind people (autistics) are blind to other people's minds or emotions. In fact, they don't even know that other people have minds separate from their own; autistics tend to assume that other people know and think exactly what they do. Baron-Cohen's notion of autism as the extreme male brain explains why an overwhelming majority of autistics (four out of five) are men and there are relatively few female autistics (although, once again, there are exceptions to the general pattern; there is an occasional

The female brain tends toward empathizing and mentalizing thinking, treating machines and objects as if they were other people. They attribute minds, thoughts, and feelings to inanimate objects. That, according to Crespi and Badcock, is the essence of paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenics hear voices where there are no people, and they attribute minds and thinking where none exist, such as when they believe other people are talking about or conspiring against them when they aren't. Paranoid schizophrenics are hypermentalistic, and overinfer minds and emotions in other people, just as autistics are hypomentalistic, and underinfer minds and emotions in other people.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200803/male-brain-vs-female-brain-ii-what-is-extreme-male-brain-w

Do you fit neatly into the box ? Or are you somewhere in between ?

Metta Zenda

[LordKAT]

An apt description for me. I find people confusing and can't read them as well as my friends, male or female. The need to know how something works is always there and once I know, I can do anything with it.

[peky]

psychology mumble jumbo

[Ms Grace]

The purpose of this is to understand another person, to predict his or her behavior, and to connect or resonate with him or her emotionally.
...
The female brain tends toward empathizing and mentalizing thinking, treating machines and objects as if they were other people. They attribute minds, thoughts, and feelings to inanimate objects.

Guilty as charged!

[Anatta]

psychology mumble jumbo

Kia Ora Peky,

That would depend on how one defines 'mumbo jumbo'

1:  an object of superstitious homage and fear
2a :  a complicated often ritualistic observance with elaborate trappings
b :  complicated activity or language usually intended to obscure and confuse
3:  unnecessarily involved and incomprehensible language :

Quote from article on 'Generalisation'

"There are many individual exceptions to any empirical generalization, but exceptions do not invalidate generalizations. For example, there are many women who are taller than the average man, and there are many men who are shorter than the average woman. But the generalization "Men are on average taller than women" is still valid. Similarly, not all men have a strong male brain, and not all women have a strong female brain, but there are average differences between men and women, and men are far more likely to have the male brain and women are far more likely to have the female brain".


So is it 'all' just mumbo jumbo? Do you have something to back up your opposition to their findings Peky...

If so please enlighten members with your research and findings that dispute the contents of the article in question...

However I have to take into account this might be just your personal observation sans scientific backing...

BTW Nice to see you back Peky and keeping me on my toes 

Metta Zenda

[genderhell]

I would agree that woman are not being good at systemizing is the stereotype : woman can't/don't want to figure out how stuff works (can't change the oil in their cars, not good at mechanical things, don't have a garage full of tools, are greatly outnumbered in the math/science/engineering fields compared to men, "needs a man around to fix stuff", etc).

I also agree that the stereotype of men is that of a systemizer.

[Zumbagirl]

I think the whole thing is a load of crap that exists to keep perpetuating the gender system. What about a woman scientist? Or a gay male hair dresser? Too many broad generalities. If 51% of males think one way and 51% of females think a certain way is that "the norm"?

[Northern Jane]

I have attributes of both and both manifest themselves in different environments.

[Kaelin]

Gender stereotypes are damned infuriating.  If the point is that there are "systematic brains" and "empathetic brains," they should be given those labels, not male/female.

But it's even worse than that.  The blog presents a false duality between being systematic and empathetic, as if people didn't fit on a continuum (on a single dimension) or could be high on both or low on both (actually making systematic/empathetic a two-dimensional matter).  My belief is that there is a rich multi-dimensional spread of possibilities, tapping into more combinations than most of us can imagine is possible.  Dumbing it down to two labels -- like Republican or Democrat -- does more to hurt us (giving us a false sense of clarity) than to help us, because many of us (dare I say most of us) don't fit into that narrative.

[Anatta]

I have attributes of both and both manifest themselves in different environments.

Kia Ora Jane,

This no doubt would be the case for many...

Metta Zenda

[Carrie Liz]

I actually kind of fit both. I guess I lean more toward the analytical side, because I was such a math nerd in school, and I like understanding how things work, but at the same time I am indeed always injecting personalities into inanimate objects. Like, as a kid when I was playing with marbles, I always thought that certain marbles were winning because of the 'personality' of the marble rather than just cold mechanical processes. I even gave them names. And when my knex roller coaster didn't make it all the way through the track, I tended to talk to the car like a therapist and explain to it why it needed to go faster rather than practical things like, you know, lubricating the wheels. Dad was always the one who came up with these practical solutions. I guess there's a reason why he didn't understand why I wanted to put a rubber cow on top of my pinewood derby car. (I thought that the car needed a driver. )

So I guess I'm kind of both?  That seems about where I land on most masculinity/femininity tests, is right in the middle. I really don't understand it. I won math competitions at a state level, and yet every single test I've ever taken tells me that I'm more creative and right-brained. How the hell does that make any sense? I really don't understand it.

[Anatta]

Kia Ora,

Thanks for your responses, I guess it's "Different strokes for different folks" anyhow here's another slightly different take on things, to balance it out a little....

"Are brain differences to blame for communication breakdowns between the sexes? Can they explain why men and women respond differently in stressful situations? The evidence suggests such differences might very well influence behavior — but it's too soon to tell if they really do, according to experts participating in a panel discussion on The Neuroscience of Gender at the German Center for Research and Innovation in New York City."


"Dr. Habel is a psychologist and psychotherapist whose research focuses on neurobiological correlates of emotion and cognition, and the effects of psychotherapeutic interventions and hormonal influences on brain activation. "Gender might be the most influential factor in our lives, starting even before birth," she stated. "In everyday life, we continuously deal with gender differences, and sometimes we struggle with the peculiarities of the 'typical' male or the 'typical' female."

But although neuropsychological testing has shown some "subtle gender differences" — for example, women have a higher perception speed while men are better at mental rotation tasks — "we can't make any general statements that, for example, women are better in the verbal domain and men normally outperform women in non-verbal domains," Dr. Habel stressed.

In fact, any interpretations of gender differences in the brain are filtered through "a long history of female discrimination," she said. Charles Darwin taught that women were biologically inferior to men, she noted, and anthropologist Paul Broca, who gave his name to the region of the brain responsible for speech production, stated: "We are therefore permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority."

This thinking has permeated scientific research, Dr. Habel said, "and remains a problem in any evaluation of structural and functional differences in the brain. Gender differences are strongly influenced by gender stereotypes, socialization and learning, as well as genes and hormones and environmental factors. When we do research, it's very difficult to disentangle the individual contributions of each of those factors; instead, we have to acknowledge and take into account that there is a complex interaction."

http://www.elsevier.com/connect/can-brain-biology-explain-why-men-and-women-think-and-act-differently


Metta Zenda

[peky]

Kia Ora Peky,

That would depend on how one defines 'mumbo jumbo'

1:  an object of superstitious homage and fear
2a :  a complicated often ritualistic observance with elaborate trappings
b :  complicated activity or language usually intended to obscure and confuse
3:  unnecessarily involved and incomprehensible language :

Quote from article on 'Generalisation'

"There are many individual exceptions to any empirical generalization, but exceptions do not invalidate generalizations. For example, there are many women who are taller than the average man, and there are many men who are shorter than the average woman. But the generalization "Men are on average taller than women" is still valid. Similarly, not all men have a strong male brain, and not all women have a strong female brain, but there are average differences between men and women, and men are far more likely to have the male brain and women are far more likely to have the female brain".


So is it 'all' just mumbo jumbo? Do you have something to back up your opposition to their findings Peky...

If so please enlighten members with your research and findings that dispute the contents of the article in question...

However I have to take into account this might be just your personal observation sans scientific backing...

BTW Nice to see you back Peky and keeping me on my toes 

Metta Zenda

Sans nothing dahrling... here you go, go ahead and read by yourself in the link provided below

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
Author: Cordelia Fine (2010)Reviewed by Gabrielle Ivinson
Cardiff University, U.K

http://www.cihuatl.pueg.unam.mx/pinakes/userdocs/assusr/A2/A2_955.pdf

[Anatta]

Sans nothing dahrling... here you go, go ahead and read by yourself in the link provided below
http://www.cihuatl.pueg.unam.mx/pinakes/userdocs/assusr/A2/A2_955.pdf

Kia Ora Peky,

Many thanks for the link, but sadly it doesn't give much info...However the YouTube link below is  Ms Fine talking about her book..."Delusions of Gender" Towards the end of the video during the question time (53.40) she talks a little bit about 'Gender Reassignment"



Also thanks again Peky, your link jogged my memory, her name rang a bell, it turns out I read one of her books  a couple of years ago "A Mind of its Own"

Metta Zenda

[Northern Jane]

She does a very effective job of debunking the current 'science' behind brain differences but the point of whether or not brain differences exist is not really touched upon, nor, if they do exist, HOW brains may differ.

[Carrie Liz]

Well, I think her argument in that video is that male and female brains aren't really different, they're fundamentally the same, and that the only reason that these supposed 'differences' exist is because of bias due to cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. That last section on how self-perception affects your abilities, either undermining them or enforcing them based on gender stereotypes, was really powerful IMO. (Like how women only got better at perceiving people's emotions when they were reminded that women were supposed to do better in that task, while they did worse in math only when they were told that it was a gender-related test.) That to me was pretty damned powerful. And since I've seen how babies' gender-specific behavior is reinforced from infancy, this could account for pretty much everything.

I'm not saying that it's necessarily 100% definitely true, but I've definitely seen this in action. Back in middle school, I had two girls with me in advanced-placement math who I believe were every bit as smart as me. After 5th grade, all three of us successfully tested out of not only 6th grade math but 7th grade math as well. All three of us could have gone on to take 8th-grade math while we were still in 6th grade. The difference? I saw the advanced placement as a great opportunity. The girls decided that they were afraid that they couldn't do it, so they stayed only one year ahead in math even though both of them had the capability.

Likewise, this might explain why transsexuals score high on tests involving traditional brain masculinity/femininity. Self-fulfilling prophecies. Because we want to do better on sections that correlate with our identity gender, we focus more on tasks that we know our identity gender is supposed to be better at. I know I end up doing that every single time I take one of those things. Because in my mind it's like "okay, girls are supposed to be better at this, I need to focus if I want to get that female score."

When you think about it, this actually really validates the transsexual identity of a lot of people who don't fit the traditional narrative. Because when we view a gravitation toward traditionally-feminine things as children as being proof that we should have been female, because we're hard-wired to be female, those who didn't do that as kids, and don't fit into the traditionally-feminine brain areas, start doubting themselves. (Myself included. It was one of my biggest sources of doubt.) But if it's just a symptom of identifying as female, and thus trying to fit in with how we view femininity, that includes a lot more people. And especially explains a LOT in my case, because I grew up in a very gender-neutral household where I was purposefully taught to ignore gender stereotypes. My mom even dressed me in yellow as a kid on purpose so that strangers wouldn't know which gender I was so that they couldn't give me the "he looks like he's going to be a big strong guy" / "she's so pretty! Aww!" behavior. Which could definitely explain why I didn't develop any sort of dysphoria until I was forced into the very non-gender-neutral world of middle school and was forced by peers to stop acting "girly."

So yeah, thanks for posting that lecture. I love it!

[Anatta]

Well, I think her argument in that video is that male and female brains aren't really different, they're fundamentally the same, and that the only reason that these supposed 'differences' exist is because of bias due to cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. That last section on how self-perception affects your abilities, either undermining them or enforcing them based on gender stereotypes, was really powerful IMO. (Like how women only got better at perceiving people's emotions when they were reminded that women were supposed to do better in that task, while they did worse in math only when they were told that it was a gender-related test.) That to me was pretty damned powerful. And since I've seen how babies' gender-specific behavior is reinforced from infancy, this could account for pretty much everything.

I'm not saying that it's necessarily 100% definitely true, but I've definitely seen this in action. Back in middle school, I had two girls with me in advanced-placement math who I believe were every bit as smart as me. After 5th grade, all three of us successfully tested out of not only 6th grade math but 7th grade math as well. All three of us could have gone on to take 8th-grade math while we were still in 6th grade. The difference? I saw the advanced placement as a great opportunity. The girls decided that they were afraid that they couldn't do it, so they stayed only one year ahead in math even though both of them had the capability.

Likewise, this might explain why transsexuals score high on tests involving traditional brain masculinity/femininity. Self-fulfilling prophecies. Because we want to do better on sections that correlate with our identity gender, we focus more on tasks that we know our identity gender is supposed to be better at. I know I end up doing that every single time I take one of those things. Because in my mind it's like "okay, girls are supposed to be better at this, I need to focus if I want to get that female score."

When you think about it, this actually really validates the transsexual identity of a lot of people who don't fit the traditional narrative. Because when we view a gravitation toward traditionally-feminine things as children as being proof that we should have been female, because we're hard-wired to be female, those who didn't do that as kids, and don't fit into the traditionally-feminine brain areas, start doubting themselves. (Myself included. It was one of my biggest sources of doubt.) But if it's just a symptom of identifying as female, and thus trying to fit in with how we view femininity, that includes a lot more people. And especially explains a LOT in my case, because I grew up in a very gender-neutral household where I was purposefully taught to ignore gender stereotypes. My mom even dressed me in yellow as a kid on purpose so that strangers wouldn't know which gender I was so that they couldn't give me the "he looks like he's going to be a big strong guy" / "she's so pretty! Aww!" behavior. Which could definitely explain why I didn't develop any sort of dysphoria until I was forced into the very non-gender-neutral world of middle school and was forced by peers to stop acting "girly."

So yeah, thanks for posting that lecture. I love it!

Kia Ora Carrie Liz,

You're welcome....She is quite interesting and puts forward a good argument...

Metta Zenda

[Stardiver]

The problem with statements like "The female brain..." or "The male brain..." is that it is making a sweeping generalization that probably doesn't hold true for all the data. Statistically, there are more brain differences between two women (or between two men) than there are between a man and a woman, but the headline: "DISCOVERY: WOMEN UNIQUE INDIVIDUALS, NOT STEREOTYPICAL CLONES" just isn't as interesting of a headline.

Also, there are some people who disagree with Baron-Cohen's hypothesis that autism is more common in boys because it is a "masculine" trait. Many girls with autism remain undiagnosed because it may present differently than in men with autism, and because many women tend to deal with those struggles in different ways. For instance, a boy with Asperger's might become obsessed with cameras, which is a little unusual, but girls with Asperger's might channel their obsessions into more socially acceptable interests, such as books or movies, hence escaping diagnosis. (Link: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/12/autism-aspergers-girls)