Scientific Blackpill (Supplemental)

This page is can be thought of as a sequel to the Scientific Blackpill which is also mostly focuses on inceldom, but additionally covers gender war related topics, societal issues, sex differences, feminism, and men's issues and masculinity with a somewhat broader scope. For instructions how to add a new section see the talk page.

This page is separate from the rest of the wiki, which is non pill-ideological, and is fully endorsed by the admins of this wiki. The page tries to maintain a neutral tone and focus on conveying the findings of the researchers cited without judgement, outside of the sections clearly demarcated as "discussion" sections, which may occasionally contain un-sourced speculation or writing from a non-neutral POV.

Contents

Categories: Feminism Tee-Hee Hypergamy Stoicism Crime Race Body Misandry Looks Face Height Voice Monogamy Cucks Tinder Politics Sluts Health ItsOver

• 1 Feminism
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  • 1.1 Women were historically predominantly involved in cooking and they never dominated men
  • 1.2 Almost all men are stronger than almost all women
  • 1.3 In hunter-gatherers, men used meat to obtain mating opportunities and to invest in mates and offspring
  • 1.4 90% of victims of workplace mass hysteria are women
  • 1.5 People show resilience in response to abuse and adversity in the majority of cases
  • 1.6 Even feminist women tend to prefer men who patronize and care for them
  • 1.7 Even feminist women are just as likely to have fantasies of forced sex as are other women
  • 1.8 Women are naturally more interested in people than men
  • 1.9 Overall sex differences in personality are very large
  • 1.10 Women have a slightly lower average IQ which drastically reduces their intellectual output
  • 1.11 Sex differences in personality and physical traits are greater in more gender egalitarian countries
  • 1.12 The "Gender Pay Gap" does not exist
  • 1.13 There is no significant gender disparity in STEM graduates by sex in the U.S
  • 1.14 Men face more discrimination overall in society than women
  • 1.15 Countries with pronounced feminist policies have fewer women in leadership positions
  • 1.16 Women have a 4.5x greater preference for their own sex than men do
  • 1.17 "High potential" women earn more than "high potential" men, but don't report higher pay satisfaction
  • 1.18 Women report lower job satisfaction working under a female boss, men don't
  • 1.19 Women report greater levels of incivility at work from other women
  • 1.20 Competitive women are more likely to 'slut shame' sexual rivals
  • 1.21 High ranking women are less generous towards same sex subordinates than men
  • 1.22 Self-rated female happiness has been declining since the 1970s in the US
  • 1.23 Individuals of both sexes generally evaluate females in aggregate more positively than males
  • 1.24 It is not men who suppress female sexuality but women themselves
  • 1.25 Gender-biased grading accounts for 21% of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school
  • 1.26 Girls are more likely to target the opposite sex with aggression than boys
• 2 Tee-Hee
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  • 2.1 Women cry four times as much as men and never outgrow teenage crying behavior
  • 2.2 Women arrest in their development sooner than men and are thus more childlike and less complex
  • 2.3 Boys prefer cooperating with other boys, girls with their parents
  • 2.4 Women are more likely to be described as 'difficult' to deal with than men
  • 2.5 Historically, there has been strong concern about gossiping by females
  • 2.6 Women strategically manipulate other women's reputation to win out attracting the attention from men
  • 2.7 Women gossip significantly more about physical appearance than men
  • 2.8 Women are twice as talkative in small groups than men
  • 2.9 Women gossip 2.5 times as much about friends and close acquaintances than men
  • 2.10 Women prefer to talk, men prefer to do things
  • 2.11 Women are less cooperative towards their own sex than men in the iterated prisoner's dilemma
  • 2.12 Women are more likely to socially exclude others as early as age six
  • 2.13 Women who engage in BDSM as 'submissives' have lower levels of empathy
  • 2.14 Women have a greater anti-women bias in scientific peer review than men
  • 2.15 Women are interrupted the most by other women, not by men
  • 2.16 Women are angrier in intrasexual conflicts than men and need more time for conflict resolution
• 3 Hypergamy
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  • 3.1 Women lose mating opportunities with higher status, men gain mating opportunities
  • 3.2 Women (and men) pay more attention to high status men, not high status women
  • 3.3 Brazilian women's preference for wealthy men was unchanged over 30 years despite feminism
• 4 Stoicism
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  • 4.1 Women regard brave male war heroes as sexually attractive
  • 4.2 Health is a stronger predictor of marriage satisfaction for men than for women
• 5 Crime
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  • 5.1 Good looking people are less likely to be arrested or convicted
  • 5.2 Ugly people are more likely to become criminals
  • 5.3 Most rampage killers are low status or experience poor relationship prospects
• 6 Race
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  • 6.1 Across Europe, for both genders combined, whites are most desired race online
• 7 Body
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  • 7.1 Most normal weight people are still overly fat
• 8 Misandry
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  • 8.1 Playful children are more likely to be deemed "disruptive" for it if they are boys
  • 8.2 Female bullies often go unpunished, even when they engage in harsh physical bullying against boys
  • 8.3 Fathers are more attentive and care more for daughters than sons
  • 8.4 Men are typically stereotyped as aggressors, and women are stereotyped as victims
  • 8.5 Boys put less effort into schoolwork, because effort is viewed as feminine
• 9 Looks
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  • 9.1 Children trust attractive adults more than unattractive adults
  • 9.2 Good looking people are perceived to have a higher intellect and a better personality
  • 9.3 Physically attractive individuals are more optimistic
• 10 Face
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  • 10.1 Women have a preference for more masculine faces in more stable and prosperous societies
• 11 Height
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  • 11.1 Women lie more about their heights in online dating than men
• 12 Voice
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  • 12.1 Lower vocal pitch predicts who will win an election
• 13 Monogamy
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  • 13.1 Men die more under polygyny
  • 13.2 Young men in polygynous societies are more prone to violence than those in monogamous ones
  • 13.3 Living with a step-parent is the greatest single risk factor for child abuse
  • 13.4 Serial monogamy increases reproductive success in men but not in women
  • 13.5 Women with higher income expressed an even stronger preference for high-earning men
• 14 Cucks
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  • 14.1 22.6% of U.S Airmen discovered their wives infidelity after returning from a year-long deployment
  • 14.2 Women partnered to low income men are more prone to infidelity
• 15 Tinder
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  • 15.1 Only 20% of Tinder users report having had one-night stands from using the app
  • 15.2 The Tinder economy has more inequality than 95.1% of all the world’s national economies.
  • 15.3 Tinder users have higher levels of the 'dark triad' traits than non-users
• 16 Politics
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  • 16.1 Leftists of both genders are less attractive than conservatives
  • 16.2 Right wing politicians are generally more attractive than left-wing ones
  • 16.3 Physically weak men prefer socialism, physically strong men do not
  • 16.4 Political extremists report having more sex
  • 16.5 Conservatives have less distinct preferences regarding long and short-term partners
  • 16.6 Political conservatism may be mediated by a more monogamous mating strategy
  • 16.7 More physically attractive politicians receive vastly more votes
• 17 Sluts
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  • 17.1 Promiscuous females have a stronger preference for more physically masculine males
  • 17.2 Hormonal contraceptives reduce female pair bonding ability
  • 17.3 A woman's history of vaginal orgasm is discernible from her walk
• 18 Health
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  • 18.1 Both voluntary and involuntary celibacy are related to poorer mental health
  • 18.2 Being single is the largest social risk factor for men's suicide
• 19 ItsOver
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  • 19.1 Loneliness and mental health problems are rising for both genders
• 20 Miscellaneous
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Feminism

Women were historically predominantly involved in cooking and they never dominated men

On her book Kinship and Gender (2010), anthropologist Linda Stone writes that, "Today anthropologists generally agree that cases of true matriarchy do not exist in human society, and that they most probably never have." In the most matriarchal societies like the Amis and Puyuma, women have been very active in the market and the internal workings of clans, but men were trained as warriors and looked after military and diplomatic affairs (Lin & Chang, 2017). It is a myth that hunter-gatherers were gender-egalitarian. Out of a sample of 33 forager and hunter-gatherer societies, only 6 regarded the possibility of female leaders as a possibility (Karnofsky, 2021).

Murdock & Provost (1973) analyzed task division between the sexes among a wide variety of historical human societies (N = 186). One can see that tasks with equal sex representation are uncommon, so gender segregation was common. It is also noticeable that men were much more involved in the organization of the extraction of resources, often far away from home, whereas women were primarily involved in the easy tasks close to the home or community and reconcilable with childcare. This proves that women have been overwhelmingly dependent on men organizing pretty much everything. This sex difference in public vs private orientation is also noticeable in sex differences in gossip: Women are twice as talkative in small groups and gossip more about close acquaintances and friends (especially about the looks of other females), see the tee-hee section. Women's dependence on men is also indicated by their adult crying behavior and overall weaker physical stature, all of which are likely neotenous adaptations aimed at provoking male investment.

The table below is recreated from Table 1 in the study. 'Male index' is a weighted sum of the percentages with 1.0 for 'Males only', 0.8 for 'Males mainly', 0.5 for 'Equal', 0.2 for 'Females mainly' and 0.0 for 'Females only'. Entropy is a measure of how diverse the sex allocation for each task was across all societies. Sorting by entropy reveals that men specialized much more on certain male-only competences, i.e. they competed in competence hierarchies.

The amount of resources men provide is quite extreme compared to most animals and unique among primates, with men providing twice as many calories in hunter-gatherers than women and exclusively providing the more nutrient dense meat from hunting, which men used to get mating opportunities and invest into offspring and their mate ever since. The importance of resources to women is apparent even in egalitarian societies such as the Ache and the Sharanahua, where the best hunters are able to attract the most sexual partners (Cashdan 1996).

Wood & Eagly (2002) further summarized how women have been much more involved in rising the offspring. Quite often older sisters cared for their younger siblings. Women tend to take on labor reconcilable with childcare and men take care of the rest (Marlowe, 2007). Men target more difficult-to-acquire foods with a high trade value with women to earn a reputation as a good forager and increase their standing in the mate market (Hadfield, 1999). Sexual division of foraging labor is higher in colder climates, in line with k-selection and complexification and specialization in a harsher environment (Marlowe, 2007).

Historically, women had to invest more into their offspring than men because pregnancy used to be physically risky, and by virtue of having a womb, women had more natural responsibility over children. As a result, women evolved to be choosy and coy and they specialized in childcare and extracting resources from men (see hypergamy).

Data:

Number of societies with respective gender participation per task out of 186 societies (SCCS dataset), % (N)

Task	Category	Males only	Males mainly	Equal	Females mainly	Females only	N	Entropy	Male index
Preparation of vegetable foods	food preparation	1.7 (3)	0.6 (1)	2.3 (4)	12.1 (21)	83.3 (145)	174	0.59	5.75
Cooking	food preparation	0.0 (0)	1.1 (2)	1.1 (2)	34.2 (63)	63.6 (117)	184	0.75	8.26
Water fetching	extractive industries	2.5 (4)	2.5 (4)	5.0 (8)	8.1 (13)	81.9 (131)	160	0.70	8.62
Laundering	miscellaneous	7.6 (5)	0.0 (0)	6.1 (4)	12.1 (8)	74.2 (49)	66	0.84	13.03
Spinning	intermediate processing	7.7 (7)	3.3 (3)	4.4 (4)	5.5 (5)	79.1 (72)	91	0.79	13.63
Dairy production	food preparation	14.3 (4)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	85.7 (24)	28	0.41	14.29
Gathering of wild vegetal foods	food collection	4.4 (6)	3.0 (4)	13.3 (18)	31.1 (42)	48.1 (65)	135	1.23	19.70
Pottery	manufacturing	13.3 (14)	4.8 (5)	5.7 (6)	5.7 (6)	70.5 (74)	105	0.99	21.14
Drinks	food preparation	16.5 (15)	3.3 (3)	4.4 (4)	4.4 (4)	71.4 (65)	91	0.92	22.20
Clothing	manufacturing	13.1 (16)	3.3 (4)	9.0 (11)	10.7 (13)	63.9 (78)	122	1.12	22.38
Fuel gathering	extractive industries	15.0 (25)	7.2 (12)	7.2 (12)	14.4 (24)	56.3 (94)	167	1.26	27.19
Gathering of shellfish small aquatic fauna	food collection	20.0 (11)	7.3 (4)	1.8 (1)	21.8 (12)	49.1 (27)	55	1.27	31.09
Loom Weaving	intermediate processing	27.3 (24)	0.0 (0)	6.8 (6)	9.1 (8)	56.8 (50)	88	1.08	32.50
Preservation of meat and fish	food preparation	27.3 (18)	3.0 (2)	4.5 (3)	4.5 (3)	60.6 (40)	66	1.04	32.88
Care of small domestic animals	food production	19.6 (19)	8.2 (8)	14.4 (14)	12.4 (12)	45.4 (44)	97	1.42	35.88
Matmaking	manufacturing	29.1 (30)	3.9 (4)	8.7 (9)	4.9 (5)	53.4 (55)	103	1.18	37.57
Burden Carrying	miscellaneous	12.3 (18)	8.2 (12)	31.5 (46)	23.3 (34)	24.7 (36)	146	1.51	39.32
Basketmaking	manufacturing	28.5 (37)	6.9 (9)	11.5 (15)	13.8 (18)	39.2 (51)	130	1.43	42.54
Milking	food production	31.2 (15)	4.2 (2)	16.7 (8)	4.2 (2)	43.8 (21)	48	1.29	43.75
Crop tending	food production	16.8 (22)	17.6 (23)	18.3 (24)	22.9 (30)	24.4 (32)	131	1.60	44.58
Harvesting	food production	7.1 (10)	26.2 (37)	24.1 (34)	24.1 (34)	18.4 (26)	141	1.54	44.96
Leather	manufacturing	47.3 (35)	4.1 (3)	2.7 (2)	6.8 (5)	39.2 (29)	74	1.13	53.24
Planting	food production	19.1 (27)	24.8 (35)	23.4 (33)	18.4 (26)	14.2 (20)	141	1.59	54.40
Eggs, insects, & small land fauna	food collection	40.3 (27)	4.5 (3)	13.4 (9)	19.4 (13)	22.4 (15)	67	1.43	54.48
Preparation of skins	intermediate processing	48.1 (39)	4.9 (4)	2.5 (2)	6.2 (5)	38.3 (31)	81	1.13	54.57
Bodily mutilation	miscellaneous	34.0 (36)	3.8 (4)	45.3 (48)	5.7 (6)	11.3 (12)	106	1.26	60.75
Fire making	miscellaneous	46.5 (40)	7.0 (6)	18.6 (16)	4.7 (4)	23.3 (20)	86	1.34	62.33
Making of rope or cordage	manufacturing	55.9 (62)	6.3 (7)	16.2 (18)	4.5 (5)	17.1 (19)	111	1.24	69.91
Netmaking	manufacturing	64.6 (42)	3.1 (2)	7.7 (5)	1.5 (1)	23.1 (15)	65	0.99	71.23
Soil Preparation	food production	49.3 (66)	20.1 (27)	10.4 (14)	12.7 (17)	7.5 (10)	134	1.36	73.13
Housebuilding	miscellaneous	59.0 (105)	16.9 (30)	7.9 (14)	5.1 (9)	11.2 (20)	178	1.21	77.42
Tending large domestic animals	food production	55.1 (54)	24.5 (24)	14.3 (14)	3.1 (3)	3.1 (3)	98	1.16	82.45
Fishing	food collection	58.0 (83)	31.5 (45)	5.6 (8)	3.5 (5)	1.4 (2)	143	1.02	86.71
Land Clearance	food production	68.3 (95)	24.5 (34)	4.3 (6)	2.2 (3)	0.7 (1)	139	0.86	90.50
Honey	food collection	81.2 (39)	10.4 (5)	4.2 (2)	0.0 (0)	4.2 (2)	48	0.67	91.67
Butchering	food preparation	85.3 (122)	6.3 (9)	2.8 (4)	2.8 (4)	2.8 (4)	143	0.61	92.31
Bonesetting and surgery	miscellaneous	77.3 (34)	13.6 (6)	9.1 (4)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	44	0.69	92.73
Mining and quarrying	extractive industries	88.6 (31)	2.9 (1)	5.7 (2)	0.0 (0)	2.9 (1)	35	0.47	93.71
Bone, horn, and shell	manufacturing	86.6 (71)	8.5 (7)	2.4 (2)	0.0 (0)	2.4 (2)	82	0.52	94.63
Stone	manufacturing	91.8 (67)	0.0 (0)	8.2 (6)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	73	0.28	95.89
Boatbuilding	miscellaneous	92.3 (84)	3.3 (3)	3.3 (3)	0.0 (0)	1.1 (1)	91	0.35	96.59
Trapping (small land fauna)	food collection	90.7 (136)	8.0 (12)	0.7 (1)	0.7 (1)	0.0 (0)	150	0.36	97.53
Musical Instruments	manufacturing	94.3 (83)	3.4 (3)	1.1 (1)	0.0 (0)	1.1 (1)	88	0.27	97.61
Fowling	food collection	94.2 (131)	3.6 (5)	2.2 (3)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	139	0.26	98.20
Wood	manufacturing	97.0 (159)	1.8 (3)	0.6 (1)	0.6 (1)	0.0 (0)	164	0.17	98.84
Hunting (Large Land Fauna)	food collection	96.5 (139)	3.5 (5)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	144	0.15	99.31
Lumbering	extractive industries	97.1 (135)	2.9 (4)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	139	0.13	99.42
Metalworking	manufacturing	98.8 (85)	1.2 (1)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	86	0.06	99.77
Hunting (Large Aquatic Fauna)	food collection	100.0 (48)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	48	0.00	100.00
Smelting of ores	intermediate processing	100.0 (37)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	0.0 (0)	37	0.00	100.00

References:

• Cashdan E. 1996. Women’s Mating Strategies. Evolutionary Anthropology. 5:134–143 [FullText]
• Stone L. 2011. Kinship and Gender. P. 226. [Excerpt] [Related]
• Murdock GP, Provost C. 1973. Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Ethnology, 12(2), 203. [Abstract]
• Wood W, Eagly AH. 2002. A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological bulletin. 128(5):699. [Abstract]
• Marlowe FW. 2007. Hunting and Gathering. Cross-Cultural Research, 41(2), 170–195. [Abstract]
• Hadfield GK. 1999. A coordination model of the sexual division of labor. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 40(2), pp.125-153. [Abstract]
• Lin JYC, Chang S. 2017. Matriarch. [Article]
• Karnofsky H. 2021. Pre-agriculture gender relations seem bad. [Article]

Almost all men are stronger than almost all women

Hagen and Rosenström combined grip strength by age and sex based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2012. Combined grip strength is the sum of the largest isometric grip strength readings from each hand, measured using a handgrip dynamometer. Grip strength, in turn, is an index of upper body strength. Comparing the combined grip strength of a sample size N = 7064 he could demonstrate that there are substantial sex differences in strength, corroborating evidence of women's natural dependence on men. Leyk (2007) found 95% of males produced more hand grip force than 90% of females.

Related to this, Sell et al. (2012) summarized how men, but not women, show distinct adaptations for combat and hunting such as stronger bones, more muscle mass, faster coordination and orientation, less confusion, better metabolism. See the table below (copied from Table 1 in the paper and with some additions).

Males are 90% of killers and 78% of victims, which is a similar pattern to chimpanzees and bonobos (Wilson 2014). That being said, women are more likely to initiate intimate partner violence (Schmitt 2014). Further, 63% of violent crime is committed by 1% of men (Falk 2013), so apex fallacy makes men seem more violent than they are on average leading feminists to adopt a false benevolent mother vs tyrannical father dichotomy. It is more accurate to say that men have overall more human capital with regards to physical labor and the ability to physically protect and a tiny fraction of psychopathic males commits all the violent crimes.

Figures:

Sex differences in grip strength.

Data:

Table 1: Sex differences that suggest male design for combat in humans

Male humans have	Reference	Effect size
Greater upper body strength	Lassek and Gaulin 2009	d = 3.0, 61% more muscle mass 25% more for same weight
Taller bodies	Alexander et al. 1979	d = 1.7, 8% taller
Heavier bodies	Loomba-Albrecht and Styne 2009	d = 1.4, 30% heavier
Higher basal metabolic rates	Garn and Clark 1953
Faster reaction times	Der and Deary 2006	d ≈ 0.4
Thicker bones in the jaw	Humphrey et al. 1999
Faster mental rotation and spatial visualization	Voyer et al. 1995, Levine et al. 2016	d ≈ 0.8
More accurate throwing	Jardine and Martin 1983
More accurate blocking of thrown objects	Watson and Kimura 1989
More interest in the practice of combat skills	Gibbons et al. 1997
Stronger bones	Schoenau et al. 2001	d = 2.0, 50% stronger (SSI)
Greater bone density specifically in the arms	Wells 2007
Easier heat dissipation	Burse 1979
More hemoglobin in the blood	Waalen and Beutler 2001
Higher muscle-to-fat ratio	Loomba-Albrecht and Styne 2009
Larger hearts	Tanner 1970
Higher systolic blood pressure
Broader shoulders enabling efficient weapon use	Brues 1959; Tanner 1989
Larger sweat capacity	Burse 1979
Larger circulating blood volume
Greater resistance to dehydration
Tolerance for risk and dangerous activities	Wilson et al. 2009
Faster sensory frame shifting (harder to confuse)	Cadieux et al. 2010
Thicker skin	Shuster et al. (1975)	d = 1.0, 30% thicker
Right hand grip strength	Günther 2008	d = 3.0, 70% stronger
Larger lung capacity	Gursoy 2010	d = 1.4, 30% more
Leg power		d = 2.5, 70% stronger
Greater use of physical and homicidal aggression	Daly and Wilson 1988
Throwing velocity	Buss 1995	d = 2.18
Throwing distance		d = 1.98
Throwing accuracy		d = 0.96
Throwing distance	Thomas 1985	d ≈ 3.5
Balance		d ≈ 1.0
Shuttle run		d ≈ 1.5
Long jump		d ≈ 2.0
Navigation skills	Nazareth et al. 2019	d ≈ 0.4
Punching power	Morris et al. 2020

Use the following tool to visualize the overlap for different Cohen's d's: https://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/

Resources:

• Edward H. Hagen, Tom Rosenström, Explaining the sex difference in depression with a unified bargaining model of anger and depression, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2016, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 117–132, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eow006
• Sell A, Hone LS, Pound N. 2012. The importance of physical strength to human males. Human Nature. 1;23(1):30-44. [Abstract]
• Schmitt D. 2014. The Evolution of Culturally-Variable Sex Differences: Men and Women Are Not Always Different, but When They Are…It Appears Not to Result from Patriarchy or Sex Role Socialization. [Abstract]
• Bisogno E et al. 2014. Global Study on Homicide 2013. [FullText]
• Wilson ML et al. 2014. Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts [Abstract]
• Falk Ö, Wallinius M, Lundström S, Thomas F, Anckarsäter H, Kerekes N. 2013. The 1 % of the population accountable for 63 % of all violent crime convictions. [FullText]
• Leyk D, Gorges W, Ridder D, Wunderlich M, Rüther T, Sievert A, Essfeld D. 2007. Hand-grip strength of young men, women and highly trained female athletes. European journal of applied physiology. 1;99(4):415-21. [Abstract]

In hunter-gatherers, men used meat to obtain mating opportunities and to invest in mates and offspring

Puts (2010) summarized analyses of food gathering and hunting in foraging societies. In all societies studied, the men produced much more meat and used it to gain mating opportunities and to invest in mates and the offspring. This investment in parenting likely depended on their paternity confidence. The overall male-to-female sex ratio of calories production is around 2. Kaplan (2000) found that across 10 hunter-gatherer societies, men produced on average 3988 cal of meat per day, women only 37 (Table 2, replicated below), so men produced roughly 100 times as much meat. Meat is extremely nutrient dense compared to most plants. This may explain in part, why women prefer carnivore men over vegetarians. Murdock and Provost (1973) found that in 97% men did exclusively the hunting, and in 88% they exclusively set up animal traps (in 98% this was done exclusively or predominantly by males). Males appear to generally target more energy-dense foods (see Marlowe 2007 two sections above). Male food provision is also highly prevalent in our closest primate relatives due to the female bearing entirety of the parental investments as Mogielnicki & Pearl (2020) summarized.

Quotes:

• While men contribute far less parental care than women do across societies (Hewlett, 1992), men protect mates and offspring from predators and other men, and can provide high quality food through hunting. Men procure more food (in kcal) than women do in foraging societies, far more than they consume (Kaplan et al., 2000). In contemporary foragers,men use meat to obtain mating opportunities (Hawkes, 1991) and to invest in current mates and offspring (Kaplan et al., 2000; Marlowe, 2003), and meat probably served this dual function over human evolution. The proportion of a man’s resources channeled toward parenting likely depended on his paternity confidence (Anderson, Kaplan, Lam, & Lancaster, 1999; Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster, 1999, 2007). Source

Data:

Table 2. Production of energy by men and women in foraging societies (daily adults production in calories)

Society	Sex	Meat	Roots	Fruits	Other	Total
Onge	men	3919	0	0	81	4000
	women	0	968	1	52	1021
Anbarra	men	2662	0	0	79	2742
	women	301	337	157	379	1174
Arnhem	men	4570	0	0	8	4578
	women	0	1724	37	251	2012
Ache	men	4947	0	6	636	5590
	women	32	0	47	976	1055
Nukak	men	3056	0	0	1500	4556
	women	0	0	2988	0	2988
Hiwi	men	3211	2	121	156	3489
	women	38	713	83	82	916
!Kung 1	men	2247			974	3221
	women	0	348	348	3169	3864
!Kung 2	men	6409				6409
	women
Gwi	men	1612	800	0	0	2412
	women	0	0	0	3200	3200
Hadza	men	7248	0	0	841	8089
	women	0	3093	1304	0	4397

References:

• Puts DA. 2010. Beauty and the beast: mechanisms of sexual selection in humans. [Abstract]
• Mogielnicki C, Pearl K. 2020. Hominid sexual nature. [Article]

90% of victims of workplace mass hysteria are women

A study by Brabant et al. (2006) summarized the literature on mass hysteria as defined as an "epidemic occurence of a series of physical symptoms in the absence of organic disorder and identifiable pathogen agents." They found striking similarities in many cases, namely the "existence of a triggering event, progression and rapid regression of unrelated symptoms, and cases involving predominantly women." The Wikipedia article about cases of mass hysteria also overwhelmingly features female victims.

The table below shows the results and the over representation of women. The data seems to suggest the only large male contributions are in industrial assembly, which are possibly more likely related to realistic threats like fire hazard or toxic substances the workers are exposed to.

Discussion:

This phenomenon may be interesting to consider in light of prevalent moral panics e.g. regarding rape, child sexual abuse, hebephilia, harassment, gender pay gap, which are possibly related to the increased prevalence of women in influential positions.

These data also hint at a more conformist nature in women than men, as mass hysteria is caused by many people conforming to an unwarranted judgment. Indeed, women score higher in compliance (agreeableness) and also collectivism (e.g. egalitarianism) as Bennenson et al. found in 2018. Women also seem to score low in some overall "dominance proclivity" or "dominance potential" latent factor as indicated by variables like adult crying, anxiety, childish anger, compliance, choice copying, dolls vs trucks, private vs public, cooking vs construction, excessive smiling, preference for dominant partner and the like. This seems to be highly correlated with childishness. Indeed, hysteria reminds of children scared of nightmares and scary stories. This sex difference may in part result from women's resource dependence. Acting in a dependent, helpless manner allows them to manipulate others into providing resources to them. It may also result from men preferring obedient women as those are less likely to cuckold them, which matters since resource investment is so expensive for men. Men's fetish for lesbians and cute, playful weak women may also come from this, as wives who get additional sexual pleasure from each other rather than from other men would have been preferred. Of course all of this once again boils down to Bateman's principle and women specializing on child care and extracting resources from men. Women's emotional instability may also result from their higher reproductive success due to men more readily overlooking flaws in character in order to get laid at all.

Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans (e.g. Hippocrates) believed female hysteria frequently resulted from a "suffocation of the mother". The assumption was that if a woman had no frequent sexual intercourse, the uterus would leave its anatomical position and move around the body causing hysterical behavior, sometimes called "the wicked womb" (Teive et al. 2014).

Data:

Translated from Tableau 1 "Répartition des épisodes d'hystérie de masse répertoirés selon le contexte de travail"

Sector (context)	# hysteria episodes	Women/cases
Food (processing plants)	2	61/65
Food (plantations)	3	60/60
Textile (fabrication)	5	189/200
Textile (warehouse)	1	53/72
Service (telecom)	3	100/103
Service (data processing)	1	35/35
Service (hospital)	1	102/102
Industry (electronics assembly)	5	263/265
Industry (fabrication)	4	95/95
Industry (assembly)	5	314/406
Total	30	1272/1403 (90.7%, 95CI: 89%, 92%)

References:

• Brabant C, Mergler D, Messing K. 2006. Va te faire soigner, ton usine est malade : la place de l’hystérie de masse dans la problématique de la santé des femmes au travail. Santé mentale au Québec [Abstract]
• Benenson JF, Durosky A, Nguyen J, Crawford A, Gauthier E, Dubé É. 2018. Gender differences in egalitarian behavior and attitudes in early childhood. Developmental Science, 22:2. [Abstract]
• Teive, H. A. G., Germiniani, F., Munhoz, R. P., & Paola, L. D. (2014). 126 hysterical years-the contribution of Charcot. Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria, 72(8), 636-639. [Abstract] [FullText]

People show resilience in response to abuse and adversity in the majority of cases

The damage caused by abuse and other potentially traumatizing events has been vastly overstated by feminists. In the majority of cases, there are no measurable negative long-term consequences of potentially traumatizing events, even in case of molestation and rape. What is more, moderate adversity is related to improved psychological functioning. See also antifragility. These findings suggest the excessive concerns about trauma, consent, rape and child abuse are merely moral panics, possibly created by an over-representation of women in the social sciences, the media and politics as women are much more prone to hysteria and group think.

References:

• Höltge J, Mc Gee SL, Maercker A, Thoma MV. 2018. A salutogenic perspective on adverse experiences. European Journal of Health Psychology. [Abstract]
• Galatzer-Levy IR, Huang SH, Bonanno GA. 2018. Trajectories of resilience and dysfunction following potential trauma: A review and statistical evaluation. Clinical psychology review. 63:41-55. [Abstract]
• Küenzlen H, Bekkhus M, Thorpe K, Borge AI. Potential traumatic events in early childhood and behavioural resilience: a longitudinal case control study. European Journal of Developmental Psychology. 2016 May 3;13(3):394-406. [Abstract]
• Rind B, Tromovitch P, Bauserman R. 1998. A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. Psychological bulletin. 124(1):22. [FullText]
• Ulrich H, Randolph M, Acheson S. 2005–2006. Child Sexual Abuse: A Replication of the Meta-analytic Examination of Child Sexual Abuse by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998). The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 4(2), 37–51. [FullText]

Even feminist women tend to prefer men who patronize and care for them

Abstract from the paper: Women prefer men with BS attitudes over those without. The predominant explanation for this paradox is that women respond to the superficially positive appearance of BS without being aware of its subtly harmful effects. We propose an alternative explanation drawn from evolutionary and sociocultural theories on mate preferences: Women find BS men attractive because BS attitudes and behaviors signal that a man is willing to invest. Five studies showed that women prefer men with BS attitudes (Studies 1a, 1b, and 3) and behaviors (Studies 2a and 2b), especially in mating contexts, because BS mates are perceived as willing to invest (protect, provide, and commit). Women preferred BS men despite also perceiving them as patronizing and undermining. These findings extend understanding of women’s motives for endorsing BS and suggest that women prefer BS men despite having awareness of the harmful consequences.

Discussion:

This is in line with observations made often throughout history, namely that women lack agency and are passive creatures that desire to be acted upon by a male. This is inline with the bodyguard hypothesis of female evolutionary psychology: Women are physically weak and lack social power so their position is naturally a submissive one. Men have also possibly selected submissive wives to achieve a high degree of paternal confidence, to avoid wasting one's resources on another man's offspring.

Quotes:

• Study 1a supported the prediction that a BS (benevolent sexist) romantic partner would be perceived as more willing to protect, provide, and commit (willing to invest), and, consistent with Bohner et al. (2010), more attractive than a non-BS romantic partner.
• Despite perceiving the BS partner as more undermining and patronizing than the non-BS partner, women still found the BS partner more attractive. According to the mediation analysis, this was because the appeal of the BS partner’s willingness to invest outweighed the perceived downsides of his patronizing and undermining manner.
• The harmful effects of a mate’s BS attitudes are more salient for women who strongly support gender equality, but even for them, the appeal of a mate who shows willingness to invest outweighs the perceived negative effects of BS attitudes.

References:

• Gul P, Kupfer TR. 2019. Benevolent Sexism and Mate Preferences: Why Do Women Prefer Benevolent Men Despite Recognizing That They Can Be Undermining? [Abstract]

Even feminist women are just as likely to have fantasies of forced sex as are other women

Shulman & Home (2006) performed an internet survey of 261 adult women with a mean age of 27.9 (SD = 8.8), 77.6% Caucasian, 90.8% college educated. 52.2% did not identify as feminist, a similar rate to the approximately 51% who self-identified as feminist according to the National Women's Equality Poll by Louis Harris and Peter Harris Research Group. Hence, the sample is likely fairly representative of the educated middle to upper class.

They asked the participants to answer a Forceful Sexual Fantasy questionnaire which is a 5-item subscale of the Female Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire (FSFQ) by Meuwissen and Over (1991). It consists of the following items for which the participants reported the frequency with which they experience the fantasies on a 7-point likert scale, from 1 (never) to 7 (daily):

• You are being raped by a man
• A man holding you down tells you there is pleasure in pain
• A partner physically hurts you
• A partner humiliates you
• You are made to suffer before a man will satisfy you sexually

They also asked a Feminist Perspectives Scale by Henley et al.'s (1998) which consists of 50-items which assess conservative beliefs about women as well as five distinct feminist perspectives: liberal, radical, socialist, cultural, and womanist feminisms.

Table 1 in the paper shows there is a very small positive (r = .12), but barely significant (p < .05) correlation between the Feminist Perspectives Scale and the Forceful Sexual Fantasy scale, which means feminists (according to this scale), are about as likely to have rape fantasies as other women.

It was also found that sexual fantasies correlated negatively with sex guilt (r = -.266, p < .001), which is a measure to which extent women have internalized feeling guilty for traditionally undesirable female sexuality such as masturbation and premarital sex.

Discussion:

The lower women's sex guilt, i.e. the more liberated their sexuality, the stronger their desire to be raped. This could possibly be explained by a strong desire to be subordinated once the subordination is lifted and could be explained by bodyguard hypothesis that women desire domination as evidence of the ability to protect when women are pulled out of their natural domestic confines. This would be in line with women reporting lower levels of happiness than they used to.

Some say this is neither a surprising nor contradictory result as feminism is about eliminating inequality for women in education, workforce, law etc., rather than eliminating power differentials during sex. However, a common feminist claim is men should generally not overpower women and be nice to them. It is doubtful a woman who wants to be overpowered sexually does not demand to be approached and courted with a certain level of force and disregard for their preferences, hence such a standard is predicted to lower men's reproductive fitness somewhat, namely whenever a nice guy only fails to court a woman due to her deeply hardwired preference for being manned around and being treated like a child or a lower being.

References:

• Shulman JL, Home SG. 2006. Guilty or not? A path model of women's sexual force fantasies. Journal of Sex Research, 43(4), pp.368-377. [Abstract]
• Meuwissen I, Over R. 1991. Multidimensionality of the content of female sexual fantasy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29(2), pp.179-189. [Abstract]

Women are naturally more interested in people than men

Some of the largest sex differences can be found in the dimensions of interest in things as opposed to people. Women score a lot higher in this dimension often with d > 1.0, for example based on Prediger's (1982) model, women were more interested in people (d = 1.01, Morris, 2016). This preference is already present in toddlers, and it is largely determined by the presence of prenatal androgens. Berenbaum (1992) found "girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) who were exposed to high levels of androgen in the prenatal and early postnatal periods showed increased play with boys' toys and reduced play with girls' toys compared with their unexposed female relatives at ages 3 to 8". A meta study showed that the sex difference in interest in playing with dolls during childhood is very large, around d = 4.0 (Hines & Davis, 2020).

References:

• Morris ML. 2016. Vocational interests in the United States: Sex, age, ethnicity, and year effects. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(5), p.604. [Abstract]
• Berenbaum SA, Hines M. 1992. Early Androgens Are Related to Childhood Sex-Typed Toy Preferences. [Abstract]
• Hines M, Davis J. 2020. How large are gender differences in toy preferences? A systematic review and meta-analysis of toy preference research. [Abstract]

Overall sex differences in personality are very large

From the paper: Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest [dimension that is sensitivity], the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.

Discussion:

The category sensitivity which had the greatest differences contained questions such as "I cry during movies" (d = -0.95), "I love flowers" (d = -0.81), "I do not enjoy watching dance performances" (d = 0.71). Women's preference for flowers may come from their natural sexual strategy to arouse sexual attention from men by conspicuous advertisement which can be enhanced by flowers which fulfill a similar function in attracting insects by low-entropy signals (sweet scent, bright colors etc.). Dancing also increasingly seems to serve women's sexual advertisement, displaying thighs, buttock and other potentially aesthetically selected traits. Further, female adult crying is an aspect of behavioral neoteny.

A major limitation of the underlying personality questionnaire in this study is based on (IPIP) is that it fails to measure personality dimensions in which there are likely moderate to large sex differences, for example: Interest in people/children, interest in household chores, public vs private orientation, proneness to talking in small vs large groups, interest in information about other women, coyness, seductiveness, resource opportunism, childishness, sneakiness and solipsism. Furthermore, personality questionnaires may underestimate group differences as groups tend to answer in reference to their own group in which they spend more time with. This means the overall the sex differences in personality are likely even larger.

Since, three other studies have found similarly large "gestalt" level sex differences in personality, also cross culturally.

It should be noted that in individual dimensions the differences are smaller (e.g. d = .5 in agreeableness and to d = 1.0 in interest in people vs things) and it is not clear in which contexts overall gestalt differences are practically relevant.

References:

• Del Giudice M, Booth T, Irwing P. 2012. The distance between Mars and Venus: Measuring global sex differences in personality. PloS one, 7(1), p.e29265. [FullText]

Women have a slightly lower average IQ which drastically reduces their intellectual output

Colom & Lynn (2004) examined 40 datasets regarding sex differences in IQ. It was found that women's average IQ was around 4 points lower than men, and that this difference was likely indeed related to a real difference in general intelligence between the sexes. 4 points corresponds to a small effect size of around d = 0.27 ≈ 4 / 15.

The most widely used IQ tests have been modified so as to obscure sex differences, mainly by putting less focus on areas of cognitive ability where boys/men typically excel, out of the belief that any such differences are a result of error or undue focus on subtests that favor the intelligence of one sex in particular, as Nyborg noted in 2017. Nyborg also noted that political and commercial considerations likely played a role in this downplaying of sex differences in standard IQ tests.

Sex differences in IQ seem to be generally stable across various diverging socioeconomic (Jackson & Rushton, 2006) and ethnic groups (Nyborg, 2015).

The largest sex differences in cognitive ability are in spatial tasks like mental rotation (d = 0.56 and 1.0 with short time limit; Voyer 2010) and in mechanical reasoning (d = 0.86, Flores-Mendoza 2013). Women, on the other hand, score higher in verbal reasoning (d = 0.33), which is possibly related to their greater preference for social interactions and may also be an adaptation for managing female gossip. Women also generally perform better than men in tests of episodic memory (d = 0.3 to 0.5, especially for memorizing objects and faces, Herlitz et al., 2008), which is hypothesized by some to represent a female adaption for gathering edible plants and caring for the offspring throughout their evolutionary history. Men, however, excel at memorizing routes which agrees with their much greater involvement in exploration and hunting (d = 0.8, Herlitz et al., 2008). Related to men's spatial skills, men are superior in mechanical reasoning, e.g. men assembled IKEA furniture more accurately (d = 0.65) and faster than women (d = 0.78, 20% faster without instruction booklet). The participants had similar levels of experience with furniture assembly (Wiking 2015).

What's more, men's IQ has greater variability. As a result of slightly greater variance and a higher mean intelligence, men are way over represented among the highest achieving individuals. For example, at 3 standard deviations above the mean (99.8th percentile), there are 5-10 men for every woman. Since intellectual progress is almost exclusively done by a tiny, highly intelligent minority, this is likely a major reason women are drastically underrepresented at the highest echelons of intellectual and professional attainment.

What is interesting to note is that sex differences in mean are close to zero in case of general intelligence, in the so-called g-factor (Sluisa et al., 2006). The g-factor seeks to measure the ability to solve tasks in any cognitive domain and can be determined by taking different IQ or tests IQ tests that have many and diverse subtests. The fact that men still score higher in most IQ tests may mean that men invest more into certain cognitive abilities due to status drive and interest in things, as a certain amount of training can indeed be achieved in almost any IQ test, and/or that areas in which men score particularly high in (spatial and mechanical tasks) are innate specific abilities, for example hunting and tool-making adaptations, that do not generalize fully to other domains. IQ tests also do predict real world performance in intellectual/cognitive tasks and affirmative action for women has already gone too far, so it seems extremely unlikely the gap in achievement can be closed by training women more. Moreover, there is the question whether evolutionary mismatches created by removing the resource dependence of women on men actually improves quality of life with the decline of women's life satisfaction being evidence of the contrary. Despite the similar mean in g, men likely still have slightly higher variability in 'g' in accordance with the variability hypothesis, which should still predict the highest of human intellectual achievements to skew male under fair conditions. Male-favoring test items that have been removed from standard IQ tests are likely for the most part measure specific abilities in which men excel which do not increase men's g very much (e.g. spatial, mental rotation, mechanical reasoning etc.).^{[citation needed]}

Discussion:

These small sex differences in general intelligence do not mean women are not smart enough for tasks in science or the industry, but a large sex difference among the highest achievers is expected.

It is important to remark that Lynn noted that the sex discrepancy in Nobel prizes likely could not be merely reduced to the IQ difference between the sexes at the higher ranges of ability. Bias against women in these fields (while it may indeed play a role) is most likely a minor factor in the under-representation of women at this level of accomplishment. Changes in gender roles and the increasing inclusion of women in various scientific fields have seemingly not significantly improved the chances of women winning such prizes. There are likely key general personality differences in terms of agreeableness, status drive, and activity level that account for men's greater innovation rates above and beyond the small sex difference in IQ. This lack of an increase in female intellectual accomplishments at the highest levels of achievement draws doubt on projects such as affirmative action for women. Such projects are generally predicated on the fundamental idea that any sex differences that occur in academic or intellectual achievement are down to biased social structures and attitudes that inhibit women from excelling in these fields.

Women are generally held to lower standards in terms of achievement than men, with people of both sexes paying more attention to high status men and the fact that men care less about women's status than the reverse, especially in short-term mating contexts. Time spend rearing and caring for children also presents a challenge to women achieving very high levels of occupational success, but as fertility rates decline in developed countries, and as women in these countries often forgo child-rearing in favor of pursuing careers, one would expect these differences to narrow, however, there is no real evidence of this occurring.^{[citation needed]}

With the much lower amount of women who have very high IQs, these differences help explain why almost all major intellectual achievements throughout history have been carried out by males (Murray, 2003). Males continue to contribute to the vast majority of intellectual achievements, as shown by the ratio of males to females among scientific Nobel prize winners (Lynn, 2017), among many other things.

Women's superior verbal ability and episodic memory may be related to their higher talkativeness in small groups, greater gossipy on private matters and greater intrasexual competition in terms of private gossip and slut-shaming. Women are not much more talkative than men innately, as men are more talkative in large groups, so there may be very specific selection pressures on women's management of private, interpersonal information (McAndrew, 2014). The overall amount of talking that is done by individuals of both sexes is roughly equal. (James & Drakich, 1993).

Figures:

Distribution of g by Sex (based on Nyborg (2005), by Anechoic Media)

Data:

Men and women's awards for Nobel prizes and mathematics prizes as of 2019. (Adapted from Lynn, 2017)
Prize	Subject	Men	Women	% Women
Nobel	Physics	208	3	1.5
Nobel	Chemistry	176	5	2.76
Nobel	Physiology	204	12	5.55
Nobel	Literature	96	15	13.51
Wolf	Mathematics	61	0	0
Fields	Mathematics	65	1	1.51

References:

• Colom R. Lynn R. Testing the developmental theory of sex differences in intelligence on 12–18 year olds. 2004. Personality and Individual Differences 36:75–82. [FullText]
• Nyborg H. 2005. Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(3), pp.497-509. [Abstract] [FullText]
• Nyborg, H. 2005. Sex differences across different racial ability levels: Theories of origin and societal consequences. Intelligence 52:44-62. [Abstract]
• Nyborg, H. 2017. Common Paradoxes in the Study of Sex Differences in Intelligence. Mankind Quarterly, 58:1:76-82 [FullText]
• Murray, C. 2003. Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. pp 285-291.
• Lynn, R. 2017. Sex Differences in Intelligence: Reply to Comments. Mankind Quarterly. 58:1:145-156 [FullText]
• Voyer D. (2010). Time limits and gender differences on paper-and-pencil tests of mental rotation: a meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(2), 267–277. [Abstract]
• Flores-Mendoza C, Widaman KF, Rindermann H, Primi R, Mansur-Alves M, Pena CC. 2013. Cognitive sex differences in reasoning tasks: Evidence from Brazilian samples of educational settings. Intelligence. 41(1):70-84. [GoogleScholar]
• Herlitz, A., & Rehnman, J. (2008). Sex Differences in Episodic Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 52–56. [Abstract]
• Wiking S, Brattfjell ML, Iversen EE, Malinowska K, Mikkelsen RL, Røed LP, Westgren JE. 2016. Sex Differences in Furniture Assembly Performance: An Experimental Study. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(2), 226-233. [Abstract]
• Jackson, DN. Rushton, JP. 2006. Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test. Intelligence 34:5, pp. 479-486. [Abstract]
• Sluisa S, Posthumab D, Dolana C, et al. 2006. Sex differences on the Dutch WAIS-III. [FullText]

Sex differences in personality and physical traits are greater in more gender egalitarian countries

Evolutionary psychologist David Schmitt conducted a review into the research concerning gender differences across a variety of disparate cultures.

He found that, in opposition to views that such gender differences are "social constructs" that represent the results of social structures that force people to conform to certain gender roles, psychological and even physical differences between the sexes were generally greater in societies with greater legal and social equality between the sexes compared to less egalitarian socities.

There were two areas where the social role hypothesis did seem to be partially or fully confirmed however:

• In societies with greater gender equality, women's preferences for partner resources generally decreased—leading to a narrowing of differences between the sexes in this area. It is disputed whether this can be attributed to social role theory or ecological factors, and Schmitt found evidence that while the sex differences in this area were narrowed in countries with more gender equity, they were still fairly substantial.

• The difference between the sexes in terms of sociosexuality (chiefly a measure of postive attitutes towards casual sex and the self-reported tendency to engage in such behaviors) narrowed in countries with greater gender equality.

Data:

The following table lists various areas where the social role hypothesis was found to be confirmed or refuted by Schmitt:

Trait	Effects of higher gender equity across cultures	Social role prediction
Traits typically higher in women
Extraversion	Gender equity increases extraversion, moreso in women— sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Agreeableness	Gender equity increases agreeableness, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Neuroticism	Gender equity decreases neuroticism, more so in men—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Conscientiousness	Gender equity increases conscientiousness, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Crying	Gender equity increases crying, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Empathetic occupation preference	Gender equity unrelated to empathetic occupation preference, sex differences relatively stable	Disconfirmed
Resources mate preference	Gender equity decreases preferences for resources, more so in women— sex differences narrow	Confirmed
Traits typically higher in men
Psychopathy	Gender equity decreases psychopathy, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Machiavellianism	Gender equity decreases Machiavellianism, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Narcissism	Gender equity decreases Narcissism, more so in women—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Openness	Gender equity unrelated to openness, sex differences relatively stable	Disconfirmed
Height	Gender equity increases height, more so in men—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
BMI	Gender equity increases body mass index and obesity, more so in men— sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Spatial rotation ability	Gender equity increases spatial rotation ability, more so in men—sex differences widen	Disconfirmed
Sociosexuality (SOI) (Openness to casual sex)	Gender equity increases sociosexuality, more so in women—sex differences narrow	Confirmed

References:

• Schmitt DP. 2014. The Evolution of Culturally-Variable Sex Differences: Men and Women Are Not Always Different, but When They Are…It Appears Not to Result from Patriarchy or Sex Role Socialization. Evolutionary Psychology, 221-256. [FullText]

The "Gender Pay Gap" does not exist

From the article: Men are far more likely to choose careers that are more dangerous, so they naturally pay more. Men are far more likely to work in higher-paying fields and occupations (by choice). Men are far more likely to take work in uncomfortable, isolated, and undesirable locations that pay more. Men work longer hours than women do. The average fulltime working man works 6 hours per week or 15 percent longer than the average fulltime working woman. Men are more likely to take jobs that require work on weekends and evenings and therefore pay more. Even within the same career category, men are more likely to pursue high-stress and higher-paid areas of specialization. Women business owners make less than half of what male business owners make.

References:

• [News]
• [News]

There is no significant gender disparity in STEM graduates by sex in the U.S

A common feminist complaint is that women in STEM are underrepresented. In truth, however, in 2012, women earned 40-45% of the degrees in math, statistics, and the physical sciences. Even greater numbers are seen in biology where 58% of degrees were earned by women. Only in engineering women are underrepresented with less than 20%. Women are, however, drastically underrepresented among high achievers.

Feminists also often highlight computer science as a prime example of men displacing women based on their sexism because the participation of women was quite high in the early 1980s, with women accounting for almost 38% of bachelor degrees. Once the field became extremely economically viable, with Bill Gates becoming the richest man in the world through software development, it attracted men as they saw opportunities to increase their chances of being able to impress a woman with their ability to provide resources and outcompeting other men, a behavior, as discussed above, that is perfectly natural for men and can be traced back to primitive forager societies. The feminist argument also ignores the fact that computer science used to be more associated with data entry, typically a low skilled menial job, which was a heavily female dominated domain (similar to the typist/secretary type jobs that women were often employed in at the time). Early programming also literally involved weaving, so it originated in an activity that was, with a male index of only 32.5%, also a fairly female dominated task. Programming and engineering tasks also frequently involve work in solitude and leave little room for social interactions which women are drawn to more than men.

Figures:

References:

• Olson R. 2014. Percentage of Bachelor’s degrees conferred to women, by major (1970-2012). [News]

Men face more discrimination overall in society than women

Abstract from the paper: The Global Gender Gap Index is one of the best-known measures of national gender inequality, used by both academics and policy makers. We argue that that this measure has a number of problems and introduce a simpler measure of national levels of gender inequality. Our proposed measure is based on sex differences in the opportunity to lead a long healthy and satisfied life that is grounded on educational opportunities. The measure better captures variation in gender inequality than other measures, with inclusion of outcomes that can be favorable or unfavorable to either sex, not simply unfavorable to women. We focus on some of the most basic measures available for 134 countries from 2012–2016 (i.e., disadvantages in children’s basic education, life satisfaction, and healthy life span) and we relate these to various measures, including the United Nations' Human Development Index. We found that low levels of human development are typically associated with disadvantages for girls and women, while medium and high levels of development are typically associated with disadvantages for boys and men. Countries with the highest levels of human development are closest to gender parity, albeit typically with a slight advantage for women. We argue that the disparities, when they are found, are related to the sexual division of labor (i.e., traditional gender roles) in poorly developed countries as well as the underinvestment in preventative health care in more developed nations.

References:

• [Discussion]
• Stoet G, Geary DC. 2019. A simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality [Abstract]

Countries with pronounced feminist policies have fewer women in leadership positions

Sanandaji presented a number of facts regarding the effects of gender equality in the Nordic states in regards to the economic outcomes of men and women:

• Quick fact 1 – nordic societies have a history of gender equality

Sanandaji pointed to evidence of a long standing Nordic history of granting more freedoms and esteem to women than most other nations/societies in the world, stating from at least the Viking era.

• Quick fact 2 –nordic countries have surprisingly few women at the top

Sanadaji noted that 32% of directors and chief executives in private enterprise are women in Eastern and Central Europe, the share is only 13% in the Nordics.

• Quick fact 3 – the american model leads to more women at the top

"It is not in Nordic welfare states that we find most women on top, but rather in the free-market systems that exist in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and other Anglo-Saxon economies."

• Quick fact 4 – norway’s gender quotas have been anything but a success

Sanandaji noted that Norway's gender quotas in regards to corporate positions have only resulted in a few women being granted board positions, with Norway having no female CEOs in its 60 largest firms, even after 8 years of quotas favoring women.

• Quick fact 5 – large welfare states are (un)intentionally holding women back

Sanandaji points to data that suggests that women are less likely to attain high ranking corporate or managerial positions in welfare states and countries with less economically lassez-faire policies.

Discussion: While Sanandaji consistently claims the disparity in gender outcomes at the highest level of economic achievement in the Nordic nations is due to welfare states somehow "holding women back" in this regard, he ignores the large role female preferences themselves seems to play in this. Due to the consistently negative correlation between status and reproductive success in women, and the positive correlation between status and reproductive success found in men (evidence collected elsewhere in this article) one would expect men to strive more for such positions in order to improve their reproductive/mating success. On average, women are also more agreeable than men (Schmitt 2014) , so one would expect them to be less effective in jockeying for these positions than men also.

The Gender Paradox also appears to apply to other things than economic outcomes, for example Schmitt (2014) found evidence of greater sex differences in behavior and some physiological measures in more egalitarian countries (as also noted in this wiki article).

Gracia & Merlo (2016) found evidence for rates IPVAW (intimate partner violence against women) being much higher in the Nordic countries than in less egalitarian European countries, and they stated it was highly unlikely this difference was down to greater awareness/increased willingness of women to 'come forward' in these countries. Wemrell et al., conducting a review into the research regarding evidence of this gender paradox in terms of greater rates of IPVAW in the Nordic countries, noted that while the EU‐average prevalence of physical or sexual IPVAW was 22%, the rates were 28% in Sweden, 30% in Finland, and 32% in Denmark. They stated it was unlikely, based on a review of previous research, that this could be solely attributed to immigrants to these countries perpetrating IPVAW more often compared to natives.

Schmitt (2014) found somewhat contradictory evidence in this regard, he found that women cross-culturally reported initiating IPV more than men, and greater gender equality decreased rates of IPV overall, but moreso in men.

References:

• Sanandaji N. 2016. The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox: How Nordic Welfare States are Not Only Empowering Women, But Also (un) intentionally Holding Them Back. Timbro. [Website]
• Sanandaji N, 2018. The Nordic Glass Ceiling. Policy Analysis, (835). [Article]
• Gracia E, Merlo J. Intimate partner violence against women and the Nordic paradox. Social Science & Medicine, 157, pp 27-30[Abstract]
• Wemrell M, Stjernlöf S, Aenishänslin J, Lila M, Gracia E, Ivert A. Towards understanding the Nordic paradox: A review of qualitative interview studies on intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Sweden. Sociology Compass, 13:6. [FullText]
• Schmitt DP. 2014. The Evolution of Culturally-Variable Sex Differences: Men and Women Are Not Always Different, but When They Are…It Appears Not to Result from Patriarchy or Sex Role Socialization. Evolutionary Psychology, 221-256 [FullText]

Women have a 4.5x greater preference for their own sex than men do

In four experiments, Rudman and Goodwin (2004) replicated an earlier result that women's automatic in-group bias is remarkably stronger than men's. The effect was analyzed in various regards, e.g. the preference of mothers over their fathers, and regarding associations with violence and intimidation. Overall, they found, females preferred their own gender 4.5 times as much as males.

As women prefer themselves more than men, this results in women being overall more positively evaluated, which is called the women-are-wonderful effect. One can see this effect also ratings of physical attractiveness, which may ultimately be rooted in Bateman's principle.

In Experiment 1, only women (not men) showed cognitive balance among in-group bias, identity, and self-esteem (A. G. Greenwald et al., 2002), revealing that men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic own group preference. Experiments 2 and 3 found pro-female bias to the extent that participants

Discussion:

This phenomenon may be caused by the fact that women are more neotenous, so women might elicit each other's motherly instincts. In addition to their proneness to mass hysteria, women's large in-group preference bias serves as evidence of women being herd animals.

References:

• Rudman LA, Goodwin SA. 2004. Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: Why do women like women more than men like men? [Abstract]

"High potential" women earn more than "high potential" men, but don't report higher pay satisfaction

Abstract from the paper: In this constructive replication, we revisit a provocative study by Leslie, Manchester, and Dahm (2017). They found that gender and being designated a high‐potential employee interacted in accounting for pay and that this resulted in a reversal in the commonly observed gender pay gap favoring men. Our primary aim was to examine important boundary conditions associated with their work by (a) conducting a study using a sample that would better generalize across industries and to individuals who aspire to reach senior management, (b) adding critical control variables to the statistical models used in the pay equation, and (c) by introducing a different conceptualization of the high‐potential construct. Also, to better understand the consequences of their study, we considered an additional dependent variable that addressed pay satisfaction. Even after making these model additions, the gender by high‐potential interaction term was significant—ruling out four plausible third‐variable explanations for the Leslie et al. finding. Moreover, these confirming results were observed using a sample that represented individuals employed in a wide range of industries, who had the educational backgrounds, career histories, and motivational states typically required of candidates competing for senior executive roles. Furthermore, high‐potential women did not report higher levels of pay satisfaction, suggesting that high‐potential women did not perceive their pay premium to be an inequitable advantage and that there may be limited positive return associated with using a pay premium to retain high‐potential talent.

References:

• [Abstract]

Women report lower job satisfaction working under a female boss, men don't

Abstract from the paper: The participation of women in the labor force has grown significantly over the past 50 years, and with this, women are increasingly holding managerial and supervisory positions. Yet little is known about how female supervisors impact employee well-being. Using two distinct datasets of US workers, we provide previously undocumented evidence that women are less satisfied with their jobs when they have a female boss. Male job satisfaction, by contrast, is unaffected. Crucially our study is able to control for individual worker fixed effects and to identify the impact of a change in supervisor gender on worker well-being without other alterations in the worker's job.

• In two US datasets, female job satisfaction is lower under female supervision.
• Male job satisfaction is unaffected by the gender of the boss.
• The results remain after controlling for a host of relevant observable factors.
• Notably the results also persist after controlling for worker-in-job fixed effects.

References:

• Artz B, Taengnoi S. 2016. Do women prefer female bosses? [Abstract]

Women report greater levels of incivility at work from other women

Abstract from the paper: Research conducted on workplace incivility—a low intensity form of deviant behavior—has generally shown that women report higher levels of incivility at work. However, to date, it is unclear as to whether women are primarily treated uncivilly by men (i.e., members of the socially dominant group/out-group) or other women (i.e., members of in-group) in organizations. In light of different theorizing surrounding gender and incivility, we examine whether women experience increased incivility from other women or men, and whether this effect is amplified for women who exhibit higher agency and less communion at work given that these traits and behaviors violate stereotypical gender norms. Across three complementary studies, results indicate that women report experiencing more incivility from other women than from men, with this effect being amplified for women who are more agentic at work. Further, agentic women who experience increased female-instigated incivility from their coworkers report lower well-being (job satisfaction, psychological vitality) and increased work withdrawal (turnover intentions). Theoretical implications tied to gender and incivility are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

References:

• Gabriel AS, Butts MM, Yuan Z, Rosen RL, Sliter MT. 2018. Further understanding incivility in the workplace: The effects of gender, agency, and communion [Abstract]

Competitive women are more likely to 'slut shame' sexual rivals

Abstract from the paper: Researchers have suggested that women compete with same-sex peers using indirect social tactics. However, the specific predictors and mechanisms of this form of female intrasexual competition are less well understood. We propose that one mechanism by which women harm rivals' social opportunities is through selectively transmitting reputation-relevant social information. Moreover, we contend that this behavior is designed to undermine the romantic and social appeal of same-sex romantic rivals who are perceived to be threatening. Evidence from five studies suggests that women's dissemination of social information is strategic and reliably predicted by various cues of romantic rival threat: attempts at mate poaching (Study 1), physical attractiveness (Studies 2 and 3), and provocative clothing (Studies 4 and 5). Women strategically harmed and failed to enhance the reputations of other women who threatened their romantic prospects directly (by flirting with their romantic partners) and indirectly (by being attractive or provocatively dressed). Women's dispositional levels of competitiveness also predicted their information transmission: highly competitive women (both generally and in romantic domains specifically) disclosed more reputation-damaging information than did less competitive women. Furthermore, women transmitted reputation-harming information about female targets independent of how much they explicitly liked those targets, suggesting a disconnect between women's intentions and their gossip behavior. Irrespective of the gossiper's intentions, pilot data confirmed that social harm is likely to befall the women targeted by the transmission of reputation-damaging social information.

• Women transmit same-sex romantic rivals' social information strategically.
• Women harm reputations of attractive, flirtatious, and provocatively dressed women.
• Competitive women transmit more reputation-harming information about other women.
• Women damage rivals' reputations but do not report explicitly disliking them.

References:

• Reynolds T, Baumeister RF, Maner JK. 2018. Competitive reputation manipulation: Women strategically transmit social information about romantic rivals [Abstract]

High ranking women are less generous towards same sex subordinates than men

Abstract from the paper: Studies on human cooperation using economic games rarely include ecologically relevant factors. In studies on non-human primates however, both status and sex typically influence patterns of cooperation. Across primate species, high status individuals are more likely to cooperate, though this depends on the species-specific social structure of each sex. Based on human social structure, we predict that higher status males who interact more in hierarchical groups than females, will invest more than high status females in valued same-sex peers after successful cooperation. Across three studies, 187 male and 188 female participants cooperated with a (fictitious) same-sex partner who varied in competence. Participants then divided a reward between themselves and their partner. High status was induced in three different ways in each study, social influence, leadership and power. No overall sex difference in reward sharing was observed. Consistent with the hypothesis however, across all three studies, high status males invested more than high status females in cooperative partners, suggesting that high status males intuitively evaluate sharing rewards with same-sex partners as more beneficial.

References:

• Markovits H, Gauthier E, Gagnon-St-Pierre É, Benenson JF. 2017. High status males invest more than high status females in lower status same-sex collaborators [Abstract]

Self-rated female happiness has been declining since the 1970s in the US

Abstract from the paper: By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.

Discussion:

Blanchflower & Bryson (2022) replicated this finding in many other countries, showing that women have become unhappier and are less happy than men across a variety of measures including anxiety, depression, fearfulness, sadness, loneliness, anger, days with bad mental health and restless sleep.

Relatedly, women's orgasmic capacity has declined as well in recent years (Kontula, 2016). Over 16 years (1999–2015), women’s orgasmic capacity has declined considerably, from 56% of women experiencing orgasm in intercourse always or nearly always in 1999 to 46% in 2015.

References:

• Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2009). The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness. [Abstract]
• Kontula, O., & Miettinen, A. (2016). Determinants of female sexual orgasms. Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, 6(1), 31624. [Abstract]
• Blanchflower, D. G., & Bryson, A. (2022). The Female Happiness Paradox. [Abstract]

Individuals of both sexes generally evaluate females in aggregate more positively than males

Abstract from the paper: In an experiment in which male and female respondents evaluated the social category of women or men on several types of measures, analysis of respondents' attitudes toward the sexes and of the evaluative content of their beliefs established that they evaluated women more favorably than men. In addition, analysis of respondents' emotional reactions toward women and men did not yield evidence of negativity toward women at the emotional level. Nor did it appear that respondents' very positive evaluations of women masked ambivalence toward them. This research, therefore, provides strong evidence that women are evaluated quite favorably—in fact, more favorably than men.

References:

• Eagly AH, Mladinic A, Otto S. 1991. Are Women Evaluated More Favorably Than Men? An Analysis of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Emotions [Abstract]

It is not men who suppress female sexuality but women themselves

Abstract from the paper: Whether it is men or women who suppress female sexuality has important implications for understanding gendered relations, ultimately providing insight into one widespread cause of female disadvantage. The question of which sex suppresses female sexuality more avidly, however, neglects that our interests are never unambiguously masculine or feminine; each of us has a combination of male and female kin which alters how much of our future fitness derive from each sex. Here we exploit a nationally representative sample of 600 Tunisians to test whether support for Islamic veiling—a proxy for female sexual suppression—is more common amongst one sex than the other, and is affected by the relative sex of one's offspring (i.e., the number of sons relative to daughters). We find that men are more supportive of Islamic veiling than women, but women with more sons are more supportive of veiling and more likely to wear veils than women with fewer sons. All effects were robust to the inclusion of religiosity, which was weaker amongst men and unrelated to the number of sons a woman had. The number of daughters affected neither religiosity nor support for veiling, but did increase women's likelihood of wearing contemporary, fashionable Tunisian veils compared with no head covering. We further found that men were more religious if they had more sons. Overall, these findings highlight that far from being the fixed strategy of one sex or the other, female sexual suppression manifests facultatively to promote one's reproductive interests directly or indirectly by creating conditions beneficial to one's descendent kin. These results show that both men and women can suppress female sexuality, although the function in either case appears more closely aligned with male rather than female interests.

Women gain leverage over men by suppressing female promiscuity and thereby making sex scarce. Men and their mothers want certainty about the biological fatherhood of the men's offspring and hence discourage female infidelity.

References:

• Baumeister RF, Twenge JM. 2002. Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality. [Abstract] [FullText]
• Buckner W. 2018. On the Nature of Patriarchy. [Article]

• Blake KR, Fourati M, Brooks RC. 2018. Who suppresses female sexuality? An examination of support for Islamic veiling in a secular Muslim democracy as a function of sex and offspring sex [Abstract]

Gender-biased grading accounts for 21% of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school

Abstract from the paper: I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls when they grade. This favoritism, estimated in the form of individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts. Gender-biased grading accounts for 21 percent of boys falling behind girls in math during middle school. On the other hand, girls who benefit from gender bias in math are more likely to select a science track in high school. (Terrier 2016)

Abstract from the paper: Using three decades of data from the “Monitoring the Future” cross-sectional surveys, this paper showsthat, from the 1980s to the 2000s, the mode of girls’ high school GPA distribution has shifted from“B” to “A”, essentially “leaving boys behind” as the mode of boys’ GPA distribution stayed at “B”.In a reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, we find that genderdifferences in post-secondary expectations, controlling for school ability, and as early as 8th gradeare the most important factor accounting for this trend. Increases in the growing proportion of girlswho aim for a post-graduate degree are sufficient to account for the increase over time in the proportionof girls earning “A’s”. The larger relative share of boys obtaining “C” and C+” can be accounted forby a higher frequency of school misbehavior and a higher proportion of boys aiming for a two-yearcollege degree. (Fortin NM, Oreopoulos F, Phipps S. 2013)

In a similar vein, Zayas and Jampol (2020) found women are given inflated performance feedback compared to men.

Discussion:

The more less negative feedback women or girls receive may be a driver of their solipsism as they less likely know when their view of the world is just blatantly wrong.

References:

• Terrier C. 2016. Boys Lag Behind: How Teachers’ Gender Biases Affect Student Achievement. [FullText]
• Fortin NM, Oreopoulos F, Phipps S. 2013. Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement. [Abstract]
• Zayas V, Jampol L. 2020. Gendered white lies: Women are given inflated performance feedback compared to men. [Abstract]

Girls are more likely to target the opposite sex with aggression than boys

Abstract from the paper: Direct and indirect aggressive behaviors were studied using surveys and interviews of students in two public schools. The variables of “sex-of-aggressor” and “sex-of-target” were included. Claims in previous research that girls engage in far more indirect aggression than boys are not supported. Further, it was found that girls are more likely to target the opposite sex with direct aggression than boys. This suggests more gender fluidity in the use of aggression by girls and adds to a growing body of research that dispels the notion that direct and indirect aggression can be neatly sorted into male and female categories of behavior.

Boys, however, have been found to much more likely to target their own sex with direct aggression, so they are overall more directly aggressive.

References:

• Artz S, Nicholson D, Magnuson D. 2008. Examining sex differences in the use of direct and indirect aggression. Gender Issues, 25(4), 267-288. [Abstract]

Tee-Hee

Women cry four times as much as men and never outgrow teenage crying behavior

A review of 20 studies on adult crying all yielded evidence that women cry more than men (Vingerhoets and Scheirs, 2000). In one of the highest quality studies on adult crying, Frey (1983) recorded crying frequencies in an U.S. sample (286 females and 45 males, aged 18–75 yrs) over the time period of over 30 days. They found women to cry 5.3±5.07 times per month and men only 1.4±2.68 (a sex ratio of 3.79). Differences between students and other groups were non-significant. Kraemer (1986) found even larger sex differences in a younger sample with female students aged around seven times as often as their male counterparts. A German study (Ohrloff, 2009) summarized that when women cry, they also cry more intensely and their crying episodes last about twice as long as men's (2-4 minutes vs 5 minutes). They also found crying turns into sobbing for women in 65% of cases, compared to just 6% for men. Lombardo (1983) found 66.3% vs 16.6%, respectively. The sex ratio in intensity of crying integrated over time may hence be much higher than the ratio in crying frequency.

A study of 97 Dutch female psychology students (Bylsma et al., 2011), who kept a mood and crying diary throughout two full menstrual cycles (~2 months), obtained findings nearly identical to the Frey's sample. They found an average of 10.3 crying episodes, with a range of 1–53, so about 5.15 episodes per month. Another Dutch study by Van Tilburg (2002) of adolescents found based on a questionnaire only found a significant change over time for boys. This suggests that women/girls arrest in their emotional development at around the age of 12-13, and then exhibit the emotional maturity of an approximately 11 year old boy throughout adulthood (as corroborated by the second figure below), while boys continue in their emotional maturation until roughly the age of 16.

Sex differences in adult crying are robust across cultures and time. Hemert, Vingerhoets and colleges (2011) interviewed 2,497 (43.7%) men and 3,218 (56.3%) women (predominantly students) from 37 countries about their emotional reactions. Cultural differences were consistently smaller than sex difference, and the difference is cross-culturally large (d = 1.0), with only Nepal, Nigeria not showing significant differences, which may be attributable to small sample sizes. The gender differences in adult crying also persisted despite changing gender roles between 1981 and 1996, and the sex difference in neuroticism is considered to be likely mostly of biological origin (Lombardo, 2001).

Anne Kreamer and Mark Truss, JWT’s director of brand intelligence, conducted two national surveys on "Emotional Incidents in the Workplace Survey", ages 18-64. N = 701, in Spring 2009, published in Kraemer (2011). They found women under 45 are ten times more likely to cry at work than men 45 and older. Also, in 12 months, 41 percent of women cried at work, but only 9 percent of men, so 4.5 as likely to cry at workplace than men across all age groups. Lombardo (1983) found women state they would cry in frightening situations ~60 times as likely as men (.4% vs 19.8%, d = 1.80). Williams and Morris (1996) found women report more often they would cry when receiving criticism (61% vs 21%, d = 1.0). Santiago-Menendez (2013) found adolescent girls more often report to cry from anger (d = 0.79). Buss (1987) found women use crying to manipulate their partners more often than males (item "He or she whines until I do it", t(90) = 2.82, p < .006, d ≈ 0.6).

Women's greater propensity to cry is even evidenced at the anatomical level by having larger tear ducts (Montagu, 1989), which is a neotenous feature.

Discussion:

Sex differences in adult crying are in line with overall female neoteny as crying is childish behavior rooted in the necessity of babies to signal neediness and reduce the risk of a reduction or withdrawal of parental care (Soltis, 2004). Women's proneness to cry, especially in response to criticism, may in part explain their solipsism as nobody dares to tell them the truth to avoid making them cry.

Figures:

Crying patterns across 30+ cultures from the International Study on Adult Crying, overlap 62%, d = 1.0, , mostly university students, only questionnaire/estimate/recall rather than a diary (Vingerhoets et al., 2001; Becht & Vingerhoets, 2002).

Based on self-monitored, mostly Dutch data from Vingerhoets & Cornelius (2001). Samples for age >20 come from Frey (1983). The peak in ratio around 20 is likely non-significant.

Based on international data from Becht & Vingerhoets (2002), mostly university students. Some of the variance here comes from small samples sizes.

Women more likely state they would cry in various situations.

Data:

Overview average crying frequency per month

Age (f, m)	N (f+m)	Sample	Method	Female	Male	Ratio	Source	Comment
6 weeks	10 (5+5)	Canadian infants	diary	180	180	1	Barr et al. (1988)
1-12	~200 (8-11 per age-gender group)	Dutch (?)	diary	36.68	31.96	1.15	Vingerhoets et al. (2002)	During holidays (but not out of town or on vacations), recorded by their parents
10-17	~133 (7-12 per age-gender group)	Dutch (?)	diary	5.24	1.73	3.02	Vingerhoets et al. (2002)	Self-monitored, full data below
18–48 (20.28±5.20)	97	Dutch female psychology students	diary	5.15 (10.3 / 2 mo.)			Bylsma et al. (2011)	Range 1–53, nearly same method as Frey (1987)
		US students	diary	5.3	1.5	3.53	Szabo and Frey (1981)
		Hungarian students	diary	3.1	0.7	4.43
18-75	476 (286+45)	US, mostly students	diary	5.3±5.07	1.4±2.68	3.79	Frey et al. (1985)	No distinction between tears of joy, hence possibly slight overestimate, especially for men as they cry more out of joy
11-16	481 (265+216)	Netherlands	estimate	3.73	1.56	2.38	Van Tilburg et al. (2002)
18-22	497 (316+181)	US students	estimate	3.99 (47.8 / yr.)	0.54 (6.5 / yr.)	7.39	Kraemer and Hastrup (1986)
27.1±6.1, 25.7±6.0	224 (112+112)	Israeli students & faculty	estimate	1.45 (17.4 / yr.)	0.40 (4.8 / yr.)	3.63	Williams and Morris (1996)
25.8±4.9, 27.2±5.0	224 (112+112)	British students & faculty	estimate	2.64 (31.7 / yr.)	0.7 (8.4 / yr.)	3.77
28-64	222 (145+77)	US	estimate	2.44±2.86	0.45±0.78	5.4	Hastrup et al. (1986)	Differences between old and young only significant for men
65-70	64 (44+20)	US	estimate	2.59±4.68	1.36±3.72	1.90

Ages 1-12, N = 8-11 per age-gender group, diary by parents, Vingerhoets et al. (2002)

Age	Female (weekly)	Male (weekly)	Female (monthly)	Male (monthly)	Ratio
1	14.6	16.9	63.4	73.4	0.86
2	14.9	12.2	64.8	53.0	1.22
3	14.2	12.8	61.7	55.6	1.11
4	12.9	10.5	56.1	45.6	1.23
5	8.4	4.2	36.5	18.3	1.99
6	7.3	7.0	31.7	30.4	1.04
7	7.7	7.4	33.5	32.2	1.04
8	4.8	3.6	20.9	15.6	1.34
9	4.1	4.1	17.8	17.8	1.00
10	2.8	1.2	12.2	5.2	2.35
11	3.6	2.5	15.6	10.9	1.43
12	1.9	1.1	8.3	4.8	1.73

Ages 10-17, N = 7-12 per age-gender group, diary, self-reports, Vingerhoets et al. (2002)

Age	Female (biweekly)	Male (biweekly)	Female (monthly)	Male (monthly)	Ratio
10	4.00	1.50	8.00	3.00	2.67
11	1.45	1.20	2.90	2.40	1.21
12	2.81	1.67	5.62	3.34	1.68
13	2.60	0.82	5.20	1.64	3.17
14	2.80	0.88	5.60	1.76	3.18
15	1.90	0.08	3.80	0.16	23.75
16	2.08	0.50	4.16	1.00	4.16
17	3.33	0.29	6.66	0.58	11.48

Ages 11-16, estimate, Van Tilburg et al. (2002)

Age	Female (monthly)	Female N	Male (monthly)	Male N	Ratio
11	3.63	26	2.64	14	1.38
12	4.38	55	1.84	51	2.38
13	3.87	73	1.41	50	2.74
14	3.61	64	1.20	52	3.01
15	4.07	36	0.83	38	4.90
16	2.80	11	1.46	11	1.92

Quotes:

• In Greek and Roman antiquity there was little disagreement that women cried more often than men. […] women were considered to be more cool and moist than men. Furthermore, it was noted that women were less able to tolerate inconveniences and difficulties. […] Hippocrates pointed out that women more often experience absurd fears. […] It was also felt that women were more adept at producing fake tears […] whose eternal effort was thought to be to deceive men. Ovid warned that one should never trust female tears! (Vingerhoets A., 2013)
• And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
  Stain my man’s cheeks! …
  No, I’ll not weep.
  I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
  Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
  Or ere I’ll weep. — Shakespeare, King Lear

References:

• Becht MC, Vingerhoets AJ. 2002. Crying and mood change: A cross-cultural study. Cognition & Emotion, 16(1), pp.87-101. [Abstract] [FullText]
• Frey WH. 1983. Crying behavior in the human adult. Integrative Psychiatry. [Abstract] [Excerpts]
• Kraemer DL, Hastrup JL. Crying in natural settings: global estimates, self-monitored frequencies, depression and sex differences in an undergraduate population. [Abstract]
• Bylsma LM, Croon MA, Vingerhoets AJ, Rottenberg J. 2011. When and for whom does crying improve mood? A daily diary study of 1004 crying episodes. Journal of Research in Personality. 45(4):385-92. [GoogleScholar]
• Kraemer A. 2013. It's Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. Paperback [Book] [News]
• Vingerhoets AJJM, Cornelius RR. 2001. Adult Crying: A Biopsychosocial Approach. [Excerpts]
• Hemert DAV, Vijver FJRVD, Vingerhoets AJJM. 2011. Culture and Crying: Prevalences and Gender Differences.[Abstract]
• Lombardo WK, Cretser GA, Roesch SC. 2001. For crying out loud—The differences persist into the '90s. Sex Roles. 45(7-8):529-47. [Abstract]
• Kraemer A. 2011. It's Always Personal: Navigating Emotion in the New Workplace. Random House. [Book] [News] [Website]
• Vingerhoets AJ, Bylsma L, Rottenberg J, Fögen T. 2009. Crying: A biopsychosocial phenomenon. Tears in the Graeco-Roman world. 17:439-75. [Abstract]
• Lombardo WK, Cretser GA, Lombardo B, Mathis SL. 1983. Fer cryin'out loud—there is a sex difference. Sex Roles. 9(9):987-95. [Abstract]
• Buss DM, Gomes M, Higgins DS, Lauterbach K. 1987. Tactics of manipulation. Journal of personality and social psychology. 52(6):1219. [FullText]
• Lutz T. 2001. Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears. [Book]
• Kraemer DL, Hastrup JL. 1986. Crying in natural settings: Global estimates, self-monitored frequencies, depression and sex differences in an undergraduate population. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 24(3):371-3. [Abstract]
• Van Tilburg MA, Unterberg ML, Vingerhoets AJ. 2002. Crying during adolescence: The role of gender, menarche, and empathy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. [FullText]
• Ohrloff C, Messmer E. 2009. Frauen und Männer weinen anders. [German: Woman and Men Cry Differently] Deutsche Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft. [FullText]
• Vingerhoets A. 2013. Why only humans weep: Unravelling the mysteries of tears. Oxford University Press [Book]
• Williams DG, Morris GH. 1996. Crying, weeping or tearfulness in British and Israeli adults. British Journal of Psychology, 87(3), pp.479-505. [Abstract]
• Soltis J. 2004. The signal functions of early infant crying. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Abstract]
• Montagu A. 1989. Growing Young (2nd ed.). Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89789-167-7.

Women arrest in their development sooner than men and are thus more childlike and less complex

There are a few sex differences among children such as greater egalitarianism, preference for dolls and pink color in girls, but most differences are small up until the age of 9-13. With puberty, which girls experience earlier, the sex differences start to increase drastically and girls, on average, stop in their development in around the age of 15, whereas boys continue to mature and grow substantially another 2-10 years, depending on the trait. Seemingly, human females have been selected to retain their neoteny which is in line with their natural subordinate role and people's preference for females that are easy to control and conscious of their reproductive task. Below is a list of traits in which concern arrested development in female adolescents:

• Women retain crying behavior of young adolescent girls as discussed in the previous section.
• In terms of brain metabolism, the adult female brain is on average a few years younger than the male brain (Goyal 2019).
• Women are more likely to initiate intimate partner violence, which could be related to childlike tantrums.
• Women are overall more neotenous in their appearance and behavior.
• Women keep a high pitched, childlike voice, resulting in a large sex difference in adult voice fundamental (d = 5).
• Women have a lower IQ which matures earlier.^{[citation needed]}
• Women and children have better episodic of object positions and faces that adult men.^{[citation needed]}
• Women are shorter and stop around 2-3 years early growing.

Discussion:

There are various explanations for women's arrested development. First, due to higher parental investment, men have to compete more for mating opportunities by Bateman's principle. As a result men evolve to specialize and outcompete each other in physical strength, competence etc, so men have evolutionary pressure to evolve additional complexities and abilities that women don't. Secondly, men and their families prefer women that are easy to control to avoid investing family wealth in some other man's offspring, selecting childish, cute women. Thirdly, any kind of dimorphism tends to get exaggerated by sexual selection.

feminist media have propagated the idea that women mature earlier with the implicit assumption that they reach adulthood male maturity earlier, with boys continuing engaging in reckless games. In truth, girls appear to get stuck at a lower level of maturity, but they are often more agreeable and compliant which hence might cause a more mature impression with regards to school achievements and ability to sit still. Male's competitiveness not being channeled into something that produces social value due to being actively prohibited is then immature by comparison.

Figures:

Up to the are of around 11 sex differences are small, but then boys differentiate accompanied by an increase of blood testosterone. (Source: Handelsman et al., 2018)

Women pretty much arrest in their physical strength in their mid-teens, whereas men experience more substantial growth up until their 40s.

Females reach their final, shorter stature 3 years earlier.

References:

• Lynn R, Kanazawa S. 2011. A longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence at ages 7, 11 and 16 years. [FullText]
• http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815917116

Boys prefer cooperating with other boys, girls with their parents

Benenson et al. (2008) conducted a survey of 194 Belgian children, early adolescents, older adolescents, and adults from Brussels, Belgium. The research question was whether parents or same-sex peers would provide more personal benefits. The results showed that at all four age levels, males preferred their peers over their parents, but females preferred their parents. Based on a Canadian sample of 50 young adults it was further found that males more than females reported that same-sex peers relative to parents satisfied socioemotional needs and helped with the acquisition of societal skills.

Discussion:

Women and girls preferring staying with their parents agree with their overall inward, private, family and offspring orientation (higher withdrawal), whereas boys are more outgoing and publicly oriented. Women perceiving each other as less cooperative (which they are) likely derives from their substantially lower engagement in organizing resource extraction, experiencing much lower selection pressure to be be an effective cooperation partner, and to the contrary, rather benefit from denigrating one another's reputations.

References:

• Benenson, J. F., Saelen, C., Markovits, H., & McCabe, S. (2008). Sex Differences in the Value of Parents versus Same-Sex Peers. Evolutionary Psychology, 6(1), 147470490800600. [Abstract]

Women are more likely to be described as 'difficult' to deal with than men

Offer et al. (2018) analyzed poeple's social environment regard individuals whom they find difficult. In total, N = 1,100 respondents (divided into two cohorts, 21-30 and 50-70) described over 12,000 relationships. The authors analyzed ties to people nominated as a person whom they “sometimes find demanding or difficult.” They found on average, around 15 percent of people we interact with are "difficult". After holding ego and alter traits constant, close kin, especially female kin (sisters, mothers and older female romantic partners) and aging parents, were especially likely to be named as difficult alters. Friends were less likely, and co-workers more likely, to be listed only as difficult alters.

Discussion:

The authors suggest the female overrepresentation among difficult people is best explained by women’s greater involvement in kinship networks, having the role of household managers and hence having more 'friction surface'. This explanation fails to explain the large difference between the perception of brothers and sisters, however. It also ignores the entire literature on the women-are-wonderful effect, which should actually give women a more positive evaluation. Hence women must be even worse than people admit. A better explanation is women's neurotic, solipsistic, gossipy and childish character.

Quotes:

• Another important family-related finding indicates that female relatives were generally more likely than male relatives to be named as either difficult-only ties or as difficult engaged-in-exchange ties.

• Offer S, Fischer CS. 2018. Difficult People: Who Is Perceived to Be Demanding in Personal Networks and Why Are They There? [Abstract]

Historically, there has been strong concern about gossiping by females

Females display an especially strong interest in information about other females as evidenced by data from social media (McAndrew, 2014). In fact, women engage in indirect aggression and slut-shaming, even in the context of clinical research studies (Khazan O, 2013).

• McAndrew FT. 2014. The “sword of a woman”: Gossip and female aggression. Aggression and violent behavior, 19(3), 196-199. [Abstract]
• Khazan O. 2013. The Evolution of Bitchiness. The Atlantic. [Article]

Women strategically manipulate other women's reputation to win out attracting the attention from men

Abstract from the paper: Researchers have suggested that women compete with same-sex peers using indirect social tactics. However, the specific predictors and mechanisms of this form of female intrasexual competition are less well understood. We propose that one mechanism by which women harm rivals' social opportunities is through selectively transmitting reputation-relevant social information. Moreover, we contend that this behavior is designed to undermine the romantic and social appeal of same-sex romantic rivals who are perceived to be threatening. Evidence from five studies suggests that women's dissemination of social information is strategic and reliably predicted by various cues of romantic rival threat: attempts at mate poaching (Study 1), physical attractiveness (Studies 2 and 3), and provocative clothing (Studies 4 and 5). Women strategically harmed and failed to enhance the reputations of other women who threatened their romantic prospects directly (by flirting with their romantic partners) and indirectly (by being attractive or provocatively dressed). Women's dispositional levels of competitiveness also predicted their information transmission: highly competitive women (both generally and in romantic domains specifically) disclosed more reputation-damaging information than did less competitive women. Furthermore, women transmitted reputation-harming information about female targets independent of how much they explicitly liked those targets, suggesting a disconnect between women's intentions and their gossip behavior. Irrespective of the gossiper's intentions, pilot data confirmed that social harm is likely to befall the women targeted by the transmission of reputation-damaging social information.

• Women transmit same-sex romantic rivals' social information strategically.
• Women harm reputations of attractive, flirtatious, and provocatively dressed women.
• Competitive women transmit more reputation-harming information about other women.
• Women damage rivals' reputations but do not report explicitly disliking them.

References:

• Reynolds T, Baumeister RF, Maner JK. 2018. Competitive reputation manipulation: Women strategically transmit social information about romantic rivals [Abstract]

Women gossip significantly more about physical appearance than men

Abstract from the paper: Gossip has been related to friendship as it can increase the bond between people and sense of belonging to a group. However, the role of gender in the relationship between gossip and friendship has not been examined in the literature. So, the present study examined gender differences in the relationship between friendship quality and gossip tendency with a sample of 167 female and 69 male Western Canadian undergraduate University students using the Friendship questionnaire and the Tendency to Gossip questionnaire. Given gender differences in friendship, with males being more agentic and females more communal, the relationship between gossip and friendship was predicted to be stronger in the males compared to the females. Friendship quality was positively correlated with gossip tendency in the males, but this effect was not present with the females. The information gossip scale was strongly associated with male friendship quality. This finding may be related to the greater emphasis on status with males, and that possession of knowledge and control of information is a method of attaining status. Physical appearance gossip was found to be more prevalent in females, but not related to friendship quality. This type of gossip may be a more of a competitive threat to the relationship in females. Achievement related gossip was also related to male friendship quality, which reflects the greater emphasis on individuation in male friendships.

References:

• Watson DC. 2012. Gender Differences in Gossip and Friendship [Abstract]

Women are twice as talkative in small groups than men

Abstract from the paper: Research on human social interactions has traditionally relied on self-reports. Despite their widespread use, self-reported accounts of behaviour are prone to biases and necessarily reduce the range of behaviours, and the number of subjects, that may be studied simultaneously. The development of ever smaller sensors makes it possible to study group-level human behaviour in naturalistic settings outside research laboratories. We used such sensors, sociometers, to examine gender, talkativeness and interaction style in two different contexts. Here, we find that in the collaborative context, women were much more likely to be physically proximate to other women and were also significantly more talkative than men, especially in small groups. In contrast, there were no gender-based differences in the non-collaborative setting. Our results highlight the importance of objective measurement in the study of human behaviour, here enabling us to discern context specific, gender-based differences in interaction style.

Men are more talkative in large mixed-sex groups, so overall the sex difference in talkativeness is small (James & Drakich, 1993).

References:

• Onnela JP, Waber BN, Pentland A, Schnorf S, Lazer D. 2014. Using sociometers to quantify social interaction patterns [Abstract]
• James & Drakich. 1993. [Abstract]

Women gossip 2.5 times as much about friends and close acquaintances than men

Levin and Arluke (1985) conducted a study in which they collected data on N = 194 students gossiping "by having trained observers overhear conversations in the student lounge". Gossip is defined in a neutral way as "talking about a third person without their presence", regardless of tone or intention. They found 71% of conversations between female students were gossip compared to 64% between male students. Further, 56% of the women's targets but only 25% of the men's target were friends or relatives. Men rather gossiped about public figures and distant acquaintances (M 46% vs F 16%). No sex difference in derogatory tone.

Discussion:

The implication of this is that women likely engage in derogatory, personal gossip (.71 × .56) / (.64 × .25) ≈ 2.5 times as often as men. Perhaps even more often because such gossip might occur more often in small groups and women are twice as talkative in that setting.

Females confiding/sharing secrets with friends more than men has been documented in in 6 countries and 31 studies (see Ellis, 2011).

References:

• Levin J, Arluke A. 1985. An exploratory analysis of sex differences in gossip [Abstract]
• Ellis L. 2011. Identifying and explaining apparent universal sex differences in cognition and behavior. [Abstract]

Women prefer to talk, men prefer to do things

Abstract from the paper: Two studies examined sex differences in the same-sex friendships of college men and women. In a questionnaire study, self-reports were obtained of number of friends and frequency of interaction, typical and preferred kinds of interactions with friends, and emotional intimacy. A role-play study provided more direct information about conversations between friends. Men and women did not differ in quantitative aspects of friendship such as number of friends or amount of time spent with friends, nor in the value placed on intimate friendships. However, clear sex differences were found in both studies in the nature of interactions with friends. Women showed emphasis on emotional sharing and talking; men emphasized activities and doing things together. Results are discussed in terms of life-cycle constraints on friendship, and the possibility of sex differences in standards for assessing intimacy in friendship is considered.

References:

• Caldwell MA, Peplau LA. 1982. Sex differences in same-sex friendship [Abstract]

Women are less cooperative towards their own sex than men in the iterated prisoner's dilemma

Abstract from the paper: In the finite-horizon repeated Prisoner's Dilemma, a compelling backward induction argument shows that rational players will defect in every round, following the uniquely optimal Nash equilibrium path. It is frequently asserted that cooperation gradually declines when a Prisoner's Dilemma is repeated multiple times by the same players, but the evidence for this is unconvincing, and a classic experiment by Rapoport and Chammah in the 1960s reported that cooperation eventually recovers if the game is repeated hundreds of times. They also reported that men paired with men cooperate almost twice as frequently as women paired with women. Our conceptual replication with Prisoner's Dilemmas repeated over 300 rounds with no breaks, using more advanced, computerized methodology, revealed no decline in cooperation, apart from endgame effects in the last few rounds, and replicated the substantial gender difference, confirming, in the UK, a puzzling finding first reported in the US in the 1960s.

• We investigated cooperation in the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma.
• With stringent tests, we found no general decline over 300 rounds.
• We confirmed an endgame effect as the known final round approaches.
• We confirmed a puzzling gender difference: men cooperate much more than women.

References:

• Colman AM, Pulford BD, Krockow EM. 2018. Persistent cooperation and gender differences in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games: Some things never change [Abstract]

Women are more likely to socially exclude others as early as age six

Abstract from the paper: Throughout their lives, women provide for their own and their children's and grandchildren's needs and thus must minimize their risk of incurring physical harm. Alliances with individuals who will assist them in attaining these goals increase their probability of survival and reproductive success. High status in the community enhances access to physical resources and valuable allies. Kin, a mate, and affines share a mother's genetic interests, whereas unrelated women constitute primary competitors. From early childhood onwards, girls compete using strategies that minimize the risk of retaliation and reduce the strength of other girls. Girls’ competitive strategies include avoiding direct interference with another girl's goals, disguising competition, competing overtly only from a position of high status in the community, enforcing equality within the female community and socially excluding other girls.

References:

• Benenson JF. 2013. The development of human female competition: Allies and adversaries [Abstract]

Women who engage in BDSM as 'submissives' have lower levels of empathy

Abstract from the paper: The practice of bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism (BDSM) sometimes is associated with giving and receiving pain. It remains unresolved how BDSM practitioners perceive the pain of other people. This study investigated whether and how the BDSM experience affects human empathy. Experiment 1 measured trait empathy and subjective empathic responses in BDSM practitioners and control respondents. The results revealed lower trait empathy scores and subjective pain intensity ratings in the female submissive group (Subs) compared to controls. Experiment 2 measured participants’ neural responses to others’ suffering by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) from female Subs and controls while viewing painful and neutral expressions. We found that the differential amplitudes between painful and neutral expressions in the frontal N1 (92–112 ms), frontal P2 (132–172 ms) and central late LPP (700–1000 ms) were reduced in the submissive group versus the control group. These findings suggest that being in the submissive role during BDSM practice weakens female individuals’ empathic responses to others’ suffering at both the behavioral and neural levels.

• Involving in BDSM relationships and practices did not necessarily result in weaken empathy abilities.
• Female submissives’ empathic responses were weakened at both behavioral/psychological and neural levels.
• Both early automatic empathic responses and late controlled processes were modulated by BDSM experiences in the female subs.

References:

• Luo S, Zhang X. 2018. Empathy in female submissive BDSM practitioners [Abstract]

Quotes:

• Taken together, these results suggest that being in a submissive role during BDSM practice influences female individuals more than males and that both their empathic abilities and subjective empathic responses are weaker than those of the control group.

Women have a greater anti-women bias in scientific peer review than men

Abstract from the paper: Even though women׳s position in academia has changed dramatically over the last few decades, there is still some evidence that when it comes to evaluation of scientific achievements, gender may play a significant role. Gender bias is particularly likely to take the form of statistical discrimination. In this study we sought to verify the hypothesis that researcher׳s gender affects evaluation of his or her work, especially in a field where women only represent a minority. Towards this end we asked a sample of subjects, mostly economics majors, to evaluate a paper written by mixed-gender couples, indicating that it was (co-)authored by a “female economist”, “male economist”, “young female economist” or “young male economist” or giving no information about the author at all. While age factor played no role, female authors appeared to be seen as less competent than males, in that subjects (being incentivized to give their best judgment) less often believed that their papers have been published. This effect did not interact strongly with the gender of the subject.

References:

• Krawczyk M, Smyk M. 2016. Author׳s gender affects rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment [Abstract]

Women are interrupted the most by other women, not by men

Abstract from the paper: Forty participants (20 male) had 3-minute conversations with trained male and female communication partners in a repeated-measures, within-subject design. Eighty 3-minute conversations were transcribed and coded for dependent clauses, fillers, tag questions, intensive adverbs, negations, hedges, personal pronouns, self-references, justifiers, and interruptions. Results suggest no significant changes in language based on speaker gender. However, when speaking with a female, participants interrupted more and used more dependent clauses than when speaking with a male. There was no significant interaction to suggest that the language differences based on communication partner was specific to one gender group. These results are discussed in context of previous research, communication accommodation theory, and general process model for gendered language.

https://i.imgur.com/rEx7XSf.png

References:

• Hancock AB, Rubin BA. 2015. Influence of Communication Partner’s Gender on Language [Abstract]

Women are angrier in intrasexual conflicts than men and need more time for conflict resolution

Abstract from the paper: The aim of the study was to investigate sex differences in proximate mechanisms that precede the termination of conflicts. In Study 1, we asked women and men to report their intensity of anger in response to hypothetical, common transgressions involving a same-sex roommate. Direct verbal and physical aggression elicited the highest-intensity anger for both sexes, although overall women reported more intense anger than men to all transgressions. In Study 2, we examined sex differences in subjective and physiological reactions to a conflict using a role-playing scenario. Following recall of a conflict involving direct aggression and role-playing a reaction to it, compared with men, women reported their anger would dissipate less quickly and they would take longer to reconcile. Women also exhibited increased heart rate, but little change in cortisol, whereas men exhibited little change in heart rate but increased cortisol production. We interpret the results as indicating that women are less prepared than men to resolve a conflict with a same-sex peer.

References:

• Benenson JF, Kuhn MN, Ryan PJ, Ferranti AJ, Blondin R, Shea M, Charpentier C, Thompson ME, Wrangham RW. 2014. Human Males Appear More Prepared Than Females to Resolve Conflicts with Same-Sex Peers [Abstract]

Hypergamy

Women lose mating opportunities with higher status, men gain mating opportunities

Abstract from the paper: Research has consistently shown that, compared to men, women are more cautious and selective and maintain greater marital aspirations in entering and maintaining sexual relationships. One explanation of this sex difference is that women have traditionally had inferior access to earning power and social status and consequently were forced to acquire socioeconomic status (SES) through their choice of marriage partners. A contrasting view is that this difference is a component of the basic sex difference identified in the Kinsey studies: Men are more likely than women to dissociate coitus from emotional attachment and to desire and seek coitus with a variety of partners. These two explanations were explored in open-ended interviews with matched samples of 20 male and 20 female medical students. The results were more consistent with the perspective of basic sex differences than with the differential resources explanation. Increasing female SES does not appear to eliminate or even substantially reduce this sex difference. Increasing SES tends to enlarge the pool of acceptable, available sexual and marital partners for men while it tends to reduce the pool for women. Increasing SES thus tends to have different effects on men and women and may cause sex differences in the tendency to associate coitus with emotional attachments and marital aspirations to be more, rather than less, apparent. Extensive case data with verbatim quotations are presented to reveal the emotions and desires underlying subjects' overt behavior. (Townsend)

Abstract from the paper: This paper reexamines the relationship between status and reproductive success (at the ultimate and proximate levels) using data on sex frequency and number of biological children from representative samples of the U.S. population. An ordered probit analysis of data from the 1989–2000 General Social Survey (GSS) shows that high-income men report greater frequency of sex than all others do. An OLS regression of data from the 1994 GSS shows that high-income men have more biological children than do low-income men and high-income women. Furthermore, more educated men have more biological children than do more educated women. Results also show that intelligence decreases the number of offspring and frequency of sex for both men and women. (Hopcroft)

Abstract from the paper: Much of human behavior results from a desire for social status. From an evolutionary perspective, answering the question of why we pursue status must consider how status affects reproduction, especially in nonindustrial societies with natural fertility. In a metaanalysis of 288 results from 33 nonindustrial populations, we find that status is significantly associated with men’s reproductive success, consistent with an evolved basis for status pursuit. Status hierarchies have changed dramatically throughout human history, yet we find that the association between status and reproductive success does not depend on subsistence category (foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture) or how status is measured. These findings suggest no significant increase in selection on status-enhancing traits with the domestication of plants and animals. (Christopher)

Abstract from the paper: This chapter discusses, from an evolutionary standpoint, crucial factors influencing human reproduction. It emphasizes the importance of social status and homogamy on the level of the individual and raises the question how genetics and also epigenetics may contribute to explain human mate choice and fertility patterns. The chapter discusses the differential association of status with fertility for men and women, evolutionary reasons for the prevalence of homogamy along cultural traits and considers, on the level of genetics, the interplay of inbreeding and outbreeding. The role of mutations due to paternal age for human mate choice is debated. Finally, the chapter discusses the effects of early life conditions on later reproduction and also the role of epigenetics as a potential underlying mechanism. It is concluded that an evolutionary perspective helps explain reproductive patterns in modern humans and may thus make a valuable contribution in the assessment of urgent contemporary problems. (Fieder)

References:

85% of female medical students answered "As my status increases, my pool of acceptable partners decreases". In contrast, 90% of men stated their pool would increase.

• Townsend JM. 1987. Sex differences in sexuality among medical students: Effects of increasing socioeconomic status [Abstract]

In a large US sample, high status men (especially of lower IQ) have ~18% more children compared to low status men, whereas high status women have ~40% fewer children compared to low status women.

• Hopcroft RL. 2006. Sex, status, and reproductive success in the contemporary United States [Abstract]

A similar effect has been found in 33 different countries.

• Von Rueden CR, Jaeggi AV. 2016. Men's status and reproductive success in 33 nonindustrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy [Abstract]

A similar effect has also been found in pre-industrial societies.

• Fieder M, Huber S. 2018. Evolution and human reproduction [Abstract]

Women (and men) pay more attention to high status men, not high status women

Abstract from the paper: Two studies tested the hypothesis that people attend preferentially to high status men (but not women). Participants overestimated the frequency of high status men in rapidly presented arrays (Experiment 1) and fixated their visual attention on high status men in an eye-tracking study (Experiment 2). Neither study showed any evidence of preferential attention to high status women, but there was evidence that physically attractive women captured attention. The results from both studies support evolutionary theories regarding differential prioritization of social status and physical attractiveness in men versus women. These findings illustrate how examination of early-in-the-stream social cognition can provide useful insights into the adapted mind.

Quotes:

• These findings illustrate how examination of early-in-the-stream social cognition can provide useful insights into the adapted mind.

References:

• DeWall CN, Maner JK. 2008. High Status Men (but Not Women) Capture the Eye of the Beholder [Abstract]

Brazilian women's preference for wealthy men was unchanged over 30 years despite feminism

Abstract from the paper: Mate preferences provide unique windows into evolved mating psychology and extant cultural values. The current study used two research instruments—one ranking and one rating—to examine mate preferences in Brazil. We compared modern Brazilians (n = 1186) with a Brazilian sample studied three decades earlier, in 1984 (n = 630). Mate preferences for mutual attraction and love, kindness, and intelligence remained important and relatively invariant over time. Sex differences in mate preferences for cues to fertility (relative youth, physical attractiveness) and resources (earning capacity, financial prospects, social status) also remained relatively invariant over time. Several changes in mate preferences emerged over time for both men and women, including a stronger preference for mates who have good financial prospects and a dramatic decline in the desire for children. Discussion highlights limitations of the study, and stresses the importance of mate preferences as windows into evolved mating psychology and both the expression and reflection of cultural values.

• Mate preferences for love, kindness, and intelligence remained relatively invariant over 30 years in Brazil.
• Sex differences in preferences for youth, attractiveness, and resources remained robust over 30 years in Brazil.
• Cultural changes centered on dramatic decrease in desire for children and increase in desire for financial resources. (Souza)

Abstract from the paper: Evolutionary psychologists have argued for evolved sex differences in human mate preferences (e.g., (Buss and Barnes Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50,559–570, 1986; Buss American Scientist 73,47–51, 1985, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12, 1–49, 1989, 1994). Specifically, they have suggested that men and women place different values on physical appearance, fertility, and economic stability when they choose a long-term partner (e.g., Miller 2000; Buss and Schmitt Psychological Review 100, 204–232, 1993; Fisman et al. 2006; Sprecher et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, 1074–1080, 1994). In this short report, we replicated a seminal study that investigated preferences for potential marriage partners (Sprecher et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, 1074–1080, 1994) to assess if sex differences in mate preferences may have converged over time due to social change via a crowd-sourced sample (n = 522). The replication was largely successful and, thus, suggests stable sex differences in long-term mate preferences in line with an evolutionary framework. However, we also found evidence for narrowed sex differences for preferences with regard to ethnicity and education. Interestingly, while the original study found no sex difference in the preference for marrying the previously married, the current study showed that women were slightly more inclined than men to prefer a previously married partner. Therefore, these findings also suggest that social change and societal norms could make long-term mate preferences flexible and influence how they develop over time.

References:

• Souza AL, Conroy-Beam D, Buss DM. 2016. Mate preferences in Brazil: Evolved desires and cultural evolution over three decades [Abstract]

• Bech-Sørensen J, Pollet TV. 2016. Sex Differences in Mate Preferences: a Replication Study, 20 Years Later [Abstract]

Stoicism

Women regard brave male war heroes as sexually attractive

Abstract from the paper: We report three studies which test a sexual selection hypothesis for male war heroism. Based on evolutionary theories of mate choice we hypothesize that men signal their fitness through displaying heroism in combat. First, we report the results of an archival study on US-American soldiers who fought in World War II. We compare proxies for reproductive success between a control sample of 449 regular veterans and 123 surviving Medal of Honor recipients of WWII. Results suggest that the heroes sired more offspring than the regular veterans. Supporting a causal link between war heroism and mating success, we then report the results of two experimental studies (N = 92 and 340). We find evidence that female participants specifically regard men more sexually attractive if they are war heroes. This effect is absent for male participants judging female war heroes, suggesting that bravery in war is a gender specific signal. Finally, we discuss possible implications of our results.

References:

• Rusch H, Leunissen JM, van Vugt M. 2014. Historical and experimental evidence of sexual selection for war heroism [Abstract]

Health is a stronger predictor of marriage satisfaction for men than for women

Abstract from the paper: Men consistently report that they are healthier than women but have higher mortality rates. We hypothesized that men were sexually selected to present themselves as healthy to possible mates, according to predictions from health selection theory. The present study tested this theory by contrasting known influences of female mate choice with male’s reactions to a health problem (flu symptoms, reaction to vog (air pollution associated with volcanic emissions in the Hawaiian islands) or a headache). Participants viewed three sets of slides contrasting male facial symmetry, physique, and status with stoicism (defined as ignoring a health problem) and were asked to choose which male they preferred as a long-term or a short-term mate. Participants preferred stoic men who worked even though they were experiencing health problems as long-term mates, disregarding the male’s facial symmetry and physique. Status also significantly affected long-term mate choice. In short-term mate choice, participants shifted their preferences to symmetrical faces and mesomorphic bodies, signals of attractiveness, disregarding stoicism. In conclusion, our data provide support for health selection theory. Additionally, preventive health measures directed at men should recognize their reluctance to recognize minor health problems and focus on techniques that enhancemen’s perception of their health symptoms

References:

• Brown SG, Shirachi S, Zandbergen D. 2018. Female Choice and Male Stoicism [Abstract] [FullText]

Crime

Good looking people are less likely to be arrested or convicted

Abstract from the paper: Physical attractiveness has been known to act as a cue in determining perceptions of other individuals. Possession of a positive characteristic, such as attractiveness, results in a positive cognitive bias towards the individual. Similarly, possession of a negative characteristic, such as unattractiveness, results in the opposite effect. In addition to unattractiveness, the violation of social norms has been known to act as a cue for this negative bias. This experiment sought to examine how male facial attractiveness interacted with norm violation to alter females’ perceptions of males. Two male faces (attractive and unattractive) bearing similar features were paired with two scenarios of norm violation (high violation and low violation) while being rated on perceived personality characteristics. It was expected that halo/devil effects would occur based on facial attractiveness, and that norm violation would produce a devil effect in the men. An interaction effect between the two was also expected. Participants were 170 female college students. Results were analyzed using a repeated ANOVA and independent t tests. Findings show that a “double” devil effect occurred with the unattractive high violation condition. Norm violation also presented significant results, while facial attractiveness alone did not. Findings pose implications for online dating and jury deliberations. (Gore)

Abstract from the paper:

References:

• [Website]

Lighter Sentences

• Gibson JL, Gore JS. 2015. You’re OK Until You Misbehave: How Norm Violations Magnify the Attractiveness Devil Effect [Abstract]

Meta-analysis:

• Mazzella R, Feingold A. 1994. The Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Gender of Defendants and Victims on Judgments of Mock Jurors: A Meta‐Analysis [Abstract]

Observational study:

• Stewart JE. 1980. Defendant's Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Criminal Trials: An Observational Study [Abstract]

Lighter Bail

• Downs AC, Lyons PM. 1991. Natural Observations of the Links between Attractiveness and Initial Legal Judgments [Abstract]

Less likely to be arrested or convicted:

• Beaver KM, Boccio C, Smith S, Ferguson CJ. 2019. Physical attractiveness and criminal justice processing: results from a longitudinal sample of youth and young adults [Abstract]

Ugly people are more likely to become criminals

Mocan and Tekin (2006) performed an analysis of outcomes from the Add Health (National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health), a longitudinal study of US adolescents for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an American nonprofit research organization committed to unbiased economic research.

They found that there was a weak though significant connection between being physically unattractive and being drawn to a life of crime. This connection was not due to differences in socio-economic birth status between the unattractive and attractive adolescents. Their findings supported two possible explanations: first, that being unattractive reduces opportunities in the labor market, thus pushing ugly individuals to find other livelihoods, and second, that attractive people receive more positive reinforcement in the education system (such as greater sports and club participation and more positive peer and teacher interactions) which leads to them better learning the skills required to succeed later on.

Quotes:

• Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that being very attractive reduces a young adult's (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it for a number of crimes, ranging from burglary to selling drugs. A variety of tests demonstrate that this result is not because beauty is acting as a proxy for socio-economic status.
• These results suggest two handicaps faced by unattractive individuals. First, a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. Second, the level of beauty in high school has an effect on criminal propensity 7-8 years later, which seems to be due to the impact of the level of beauty in high school on human capital formation.
• Consistent with previous research (Hamermesh and Biddle 1994, Biddle and Hamermesh 1998), we find that in our data set beauty is positively related to wages. We also show that beauty is positively related to the scores received on an adult achievement test, which suggests that being an unattractive student in high school may have hindered human capital development -- possibly through teacher and peer interactions.
• In case of males, unattractive individuals are about 1 percentage point more likely to commit robbery, and 1.7 percentage points more likely to sell drugs in comparison to average-looking males. Very attractive males are 4 percentage points less likely to sell drugs.

References:

• [Abstract]

Most rampage killers are low status or experience poor relationship prospects

Abstract from the paper: Autogenic massacres are killings of two or more individuals in a single spree, motivated by personal problems or psychopathology (Mullen, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 2004, 22(3), 311–323). No attempts known to us have been made to explain autogenic massacres from an evolutionary psychological perspective. We sought to determine whether these massacres were likely committed by males who experienced status threats, as throughout human evolution threats to status and barriers to ascent would have had profound reproductive consequences for males due to female selectivity (Buss & Schmitt, Psychological Review 1993, 100, 204–232). We gathered available information about occupational, economic, and relationship statuses of perpetrators of autogenic massacres and the triggers of such murders. As predicted, typical perpetrators were low- or mid-status males with relatively low educational attainment and a history of relationship problems, and the trigger in most cases was a status loss or threat. Our evidence suggests that autogenic murderous rampages, though clearly psychopathological, may be rooted in part in male genetic preprogramming to defend status.

References:

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233146324_Autogenic_massacre_as_a_maladaptive_response_to_status_threat

Race

Across Europe, for both genders combined, whites are most desired race online

To assess racial preferences in Europe, researches analyzed anonymized profile and preference information of users registered at the eDarling online dating site. In an agreement with the company, data was accessed for all users in September 2011. Researchers performed their analyses on a total pooled sample of 58,880 heterosexual members drawn from an original sample of 876,658 heterosexual site users.

When filling in their dating profiles, users were offered the same list of racial choices in all nine countries studied, both in terms of own racial background and preferred race for partner. The question regarding partner’s race asked, "Of which ethnicity (or origin) do you want the person you are searching for to be?"

The seven categories offered were: European, African, Asian, Arabic, Indian, Hispanic (Latin American), or other. The Indian and Asian categories were combined into a broader Asian category and the other category was excluded as it could not be clear what it represented.

Based on a multivariate logistic regression model, controlling for education, gender, age, religion, marital history, importance of partner’s race, long-term dating intentions, type of membership, and country, a clear racial hierarchy emerged similar to the American data from the Yahoo Personals study above, with only a different rank position for blacks.

The racial hierarchy of desirability in this study across Europe for both genders combined was established as:

• White > Hispanic > Asian > Black > Middle Eastern

It should be noted that researchers did not provide a gendered breakdown of preferences. Asian women are consistently more desirable than Asian men and black men more than black women in other studies, for example, and thus the precise hierarchy of non-whites might be expected to change with gendered data.

Quotes:

• A hierarchy of preferences emerges among both Europeans and minority groups. Europeans are the most preferred group and generally less willing to be matched with those from other races. In fact, unlike initially predicted, online daters of all racial backgrounds are more open to dating Europeans than their own group.
• Hispanics and Asians hold intermediate rankings, and finally, Arabs and Africans are the least preferred.

References:

• Potarca G, Mills M. 2015. Racial Preferences in Online Dating across European Countries. European Sociological Review 31(3). [FullText]

Body

Most normal weight people are still overly fat

Quotes:

• Average American men and women have ~28 and 40% body fat.
• It is disconcerting that the 5th percentile for percent body fat, which should represent the leanest of the population, corresponds to 28 and 17% body fat for women and men, respectively, and that the 50th percentile is as high as 41 and 28%.
• This is of particular concern when ~66% of the American adult population are currently overweight or obese.

References:

• [Abstract]
• [Discussion]

Misandry

Playful children are more likely to be deemed "disruptive" for it if they are boys

From the article: New research shows that playful boys are viewed as rebellious and disruptive by their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade teachers whereas playful girls are not. As a result of observing teachers' attempts to discourage the expression of playfulness, the boys' classmates changed their view of these "class clowns" from initially positive to increasingly negative. The playful boys also developed more negative perceptions of themselves over time. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, indicates that teachers' negative perceptions of playful boys in their early school years may forebode a longer-term negative trajectory for the boys as they continue through their formal school years.

References:

• [DOI]

Female bullies often go unpunished, even when they engage in harsh physical bullying against boys

Abstract from the paper: Despite a large amount of research focusing on bullying and exclusion in secondary schools, there is far less research focusing on cross‐gender bullying and ‘popular’ students who experience bullying. This research provides an analysis of interactions between male and female students (aged 13–14) in a school in England. The data provides multiple examples, both in the form of observations and group interviews, of girls teasing, intimidating and bullying boys and other popular girls. The analysis also considers teachers’ reactions to this behaviour, highlighting that it is often unnoticed. This paper raises this as an area for concern and suggests that future research should explore this further, both gaining more in‐depth knowledge of female bullying and intimidation of boys and popular girls, and exploring ways of working with teachers and schools to support students.

References:

• Dytham S. 2018. The role of popular girls in bullying and intimidating boys and other popular girls in secondary school [Abstract]

Fathers are more attentive and care more for daughters than sons

Abstract from the paper: Multiple lines of research indicate that fathers often treat boys and girls differently in ways that impactchild outcomes. The complex picture that has emerged, however, is obscured by methodologicalchallenges inherent to the study of parental caregiving, and no studies to date have examined thepossibility that gender differences in observed real-world paternal behavior are related to differentialpaternal brain responses to male and female children. Here we compare fathers of daughters and fathersof sons in terms of naturalistically observed everyday caregiving behavior and neural responses to childpicture stimuli. Compared with fathers of sons, fathers of daughters were more attentively engaged withtheir daughters, sang more to their daughters, used more analytical language and language related tosadness and the body with their daughters, and had a stronger neural response to their daughter’s happyfacial expressions in areas of the brain important for reward and emotion regulation (medial and lateralorbitofrontal cortex [OFC]). In contrast, fathers of sons engaged in more rough and tumble play (RTP),used more achievement language with their sons, and had a stronger neural response to their son’s neutralfacial expressions in the medial OFC (mOFC). Whereas the mOFC response to happy faces wasnegatively related to RTP, the mOFC response to neutral faces was positively related to RTP, specificallyfor fathers of boys. These results indicate that real-world paternal behavior and brain function differ asa function of child gender.

References:

• Mascaro JS, Rentscher KE, Hackett PD, Mehl MR, Rilling JK. 2017. Child gender influences paternal behavior, language, and brain function [Abstract] [FullText]

Men are typically stereotyped as aggressors, and women are stereotyped as victims

Abstract from the paper: Moral typecasting is the tendency to categorize intentional perpetrators and suffering victims within moral interactions. We predicted a bias in typecasting, such that women are more easily typecast as victims and men as perpetrators. In Study 1, participants more readily assumed a harmed target was female than male, but especially when the targets were described as ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Study 2 participants typecast animated shapes perpetuating harm as male and victimized shapes as female. In Study 3, female victims were expected to experience more pain from an ambiguous joke and participants desired harsher punishments for male perpetrators. In Study 4, managers were perceived as less moral and fair when they fired a group of female (versus male) employees. Across four studies (N=1,319), harm was evaluated differently based on victim and perpetrator gender, suggesting a gender bias in moral typecasting.

References:

• Reynolds T, Howard C, Sjåstad H, Zhu L, Okimoto TG, Baumeister R, Aquino K, Kim J. 2019. Man Up and Take It: Gender Bias in Moral Typecasting [Abstract]

Boys put less effort into schoolwork, because effort is viewed as feminine

Abstract from the paper: Male students show less academic effort and lower academic achievement than do female students. The present study aimed to shed more light on the reasons for why male students show low academic effort despite the finding that this undermines their academic achievement. We explored whether students experience psychological benefits from showing low effort or “effortless” achievement in school and whether these benefits are greater for male than for female students. In two experimental vignette studies with independent samples of German ninth graders (N = 210) and teachers (N = 176), we systematically varied student targets’ gender, effort, and achievement and tested for effects on targets’ ascribed intelligence, popularity, likeability, masculinity, femininity, and gender-typicality. The “effortless” achiever was rated as more popular than students showing high effort. Teachers perceived the effortless achiever as the most intelligent target. Academic effort further increased students’ ratings of a low-achieving target’s likeability and students’ and teachers’ ratings of all targets’ femininity as well as decreased students’ ratings of all targets’ masculinity. Students and teachers perceived targets showing low (vs. high) effort as more similar to a typical boy, whereas teachers perceived targets showing high (vs. low) effort as more similar to a typical girl. Results indicate a need to understand the psychological benefits of low academic engagement, especially for male students, and to address the feminine stereotyping of (academic) effort.

References:

• Heyder A, Kessels U. 2017. Boys Don’t Work? On the Psychological Benefits of Showing Low Effort in High School [Abstract]

Looks

Children trust attractive adults more than unattractive adults

Abstract from the paper:

This is the finding of research by Igor Bascandziev from Clark University and Harvard University that will be published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

"When learning about the world, children rely heavily on information provided to them by other people," explained Igor, "Previous studies have shown children can be influenced by a range of factors such as whether the adult was correct in the past or if they are familiar to them. Our study wanted to examine whether children would trust an attractive stranger over an unattractive stranger."

A total of thirty-two children aged between 4 and 5 years old were shown twelve photos of white women aged between eighteen and twenty-nine years old. The images had been previously selected, via a group of forty undergraduate students, from fifty-six original images. Only those images that were rated lowest (unattractive) and highest (attractive) were selected for the children's viewing.

Each child was presented with images of six novel objects and asked to name them. Whether the child guessed correctly or not the researcher suggested they ask one of two people. At this point the child was shown two of the photos (one attractive and one unattractive) and asked which person they thought would know the answer. After selecting a photo the child was then shown what each person in the photo said the object was and asked who did they think was right.

The results showed that more children, especially girls, selected the attractive face initially and both boys and girls were more likely to believe the answer given by the more attractive face.

Igor explained: "We see from the results that children and especially girls have more trust in attractive faces, even though there are no obvious reasons why people with more attractive faces would be more knowledgeable about object labels.

"The gender difference could relate to boys not paying as much attention to the initial presentation of the faces or other research has pointed to the fact that females have superior face perception.

"It would be interesting to see future research explore whether children would continue favouring the more attractive face even when they have evidence that the more attractive face is unreliable and the less attractive informant is a reliable informant."

References:

• Bascandziev I, Harris PL. 2014. In beauty we trust: Children prefer information from more attractive informants [Abstract] [News]

Good looking people are perceived to have a higher intellect and a better personality

Abstract from the paper: Demonstrates that the physical attractiveness stereotype established by studies of person perception is not as strong or general as suggested by the often-used summary phrase what is beautiful is good. Although Ss in these studies ascribed more favorable personality traits and more successful life outcomes to attractive than unattractive targets, the average magnitude of this beauty-is-good effect was moderate, and the strength of the effect varied considerably from study to study. Consistent with the authors' implicit personality theory framework, a substantial portion of this variation was explained by the specific content of the inferences that Ss were asked to make: The differences in Ss' perception of attractive and unattractive targets were largest for indexes of social competence; intermediate for potency, adjustment, and intellectual competence; and near zero for integrity and concern for others. The strength of the physical attractiveness stereotype also varied as a function of other attributes of the studies, including the presence of individuating information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Abstract from the paper: Meta-analysis was used to examine findings in 2 related areas: experimental research on the physical attractiveness stereotype and correlational studies of characteristics associated with physical attractiveness. The experimental literature found that physically attractive people were perceived as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than physically unattractive people. Yet, the correlational literature indicated generally trivial relationships between physical attractiveness and measures of personality and mental ability, although good-looking people were less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular, more socially skilled, and more sexually experienced than unattractive people. Self-ratings of physical attractiveness were positively correlated with a wider range of attributes than was actual physical attractiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

References:

• Eagly AH, Ashmore RD, Makhijani MG, Longo LC. 1991. What Is Beautiful Is Good, But...: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype [Abstract]
• Feingold A. 1992. Good-Looking People Are Not What We Think [Abstract]

Physically attractive individuals are more optimistic

Abstract from the paper: Physical attractiveness tends to inspire friendlier reactions and more positive evaluations from others, so that the beautiful are likelier to succeed across many kinds of endeavors. Does this history of success lead to a more optimistic, hopeful attitude? Evidence from the 2016 General Social Survey and the 1972 National Election Study suggests that it often does: those whom interviewers rate as better-looking tend to report higher expectations that life will turn out well for them, and show signs of greater upward social mobility. Since optimism is itself an important contributor to success in many social endeavors, these findings suggest an understudied mechanism by which beauty leads to better life outcomes, as well as a means by which social interactions may shape personal dispositions.

References:

• Urbatsch R. 2018. Things are looking up: Physical beauty, social mobility, and optimistic dispositions [Abstract]

Face

Women have a preference for more masculine faces in more stable and prosperous societies

Quotes:

• While this presents costs in terms of reduced paternal investment, our findings suggest that when social and ecological conditions are more favourable, women high in sexual openness who report greater acceptance of short-term and less romantically committed relationships are potentially better able to realise preferences for more masculinized partners.
• For the present, our findings suggest that in countries with more favourable social, ecological and economic conditions, wherein any costs of selecting less paternally investing masculine partners may be reduced, women’s preferences for facial masculinity are higher.

References:

• Marcinkowska UM, Rantala MJ, Lee AJ, Kozlov MV, Aavik T, Cai H, Contreras-Garduño J, David OA, Kaminski G, Li NP, Onyishi IE, Prasai K, Pazhoohi F, Prokop P, Cardozo SL, Sydney N, Taniguchi H, Krams I, Dixson BJ. 2019. Women’s preferences for men’s facial masculinity are strongest under favorable ecological conditions [Abstract]

Height

Women lie more about their heights in online dating than men

From the article: In investigating the female have of this gayness/height comparison, we did find something very interesting that has nothing to do with sex. Below is the height distribution of our sample pool of women users. Unlike the equivalent chart for men, which was a very nice bell curve (as it should be), this curve has a weird hitch at 4′ 10″. I’ve highlighted the hitch below. This anomaly means there’s some lying going on, because the true population curve definitely does not have a weird jump. Here’s the graph of how it should look: It seems like women shorter than 4′ 10″ are rounding up to 4′ 10″ or 4′ 11″ (but not to 5′ 0″, which is strange…maybe that seems like too much of a lie?) Anyhow, given that men are the people we’d naturally suspect of fudging their height upward, it’s interesting that we see this trend with women instead.

References:

• [Archive]

Voice

Abstract from the paper: Voice pitch, the perceived “highness” or “lowness” of a voice, influences how humans perceive and treat each other in various ways. One example is the selection of leaders. A growing number of studies, both experimental and observational, show that individuals with lower-pitched voices are more likely to win elected office. This leads to the yet untested question of whether individuals with lower voices are actually better leaders. That is, is voice pitch a reliable signal of leadership ability? Here we address this question with an observational study of the vocal pitch and leadership ability of elected officials, and an experiment where subjects were asked to respond to persuasive political policy statements made by speakers with different pitched voices. Both studies lead to the same conclusion: voice pitch does not correlate with leadership ability.

Lower vocal pitch predicts who will win an election

Abstract from the paper: Voice pitch, the perceived “highness” or “lowness” of a voice, influences how humans perceive and treat each other in various ways. One example is the selection of leaders. A growing number of studies, both experimental and observational, show that individuals with lower-pitched voices are more likely to win elected office. This leads to the yet untested question of whether individuals with lower voices are actually better leaders. That is, is voice pitch a reliable signal of leadership ability? Here we address this question with an observational study of the vocal pitch and leadership ability of elected officials, and an experiment where subjects were asked to respond to persuasive political policy statements made by speakers with different pitched voices. Both studies lead to the same conclusion: voice pitch does not correlate with leadership ability. References:

• Klofstad CA, Anderson RC. 2018. Voice pitch predicts electability, but does not signal leadership ability. Evolution and Human Behavior. 39(3): 349-354. [Abstract]

Monogamy

Men die more under polygyny

References:

Abstract from the paper: Sex differences in mortality rates stem from a complex set of genetic, physiological, psychological, and social causes whose influences and interconnections are best understood in an integrative evolutionary life history framework. Although there are multiple levels of mechanisms contributing to sex based disparities in mortality rates, the intensity of male mating competition in a population may have a crucial role in shaping the level of excess male mortality. The degree of variation and skew in male reproductive success may shape the intensity of male mating competition, leading to riskier behavioral and physiological strategies. This study examines three socio-demographic factors related to variation in human male reproductive success; polygyny, economic inequality, and the population ratio of reproductively viable men to women across nations with available data. The degrees of economic inequality and polygyny explained unique portions in the sex difference in mortality rates, these predictors accounted for 53% of the variance. The population ratio of reproductively viable men to women did not explain any additional variance. These results demonstrate the association between social conditions and health outcomes in modern nations, as well as the power of an evolutionary life history framework for understanding important social issues.

• [Abstract]

Young men in polygynous societies are more prone to violence than those in monogamous ones

Quotes:

• Drawing on Afrobarometer survey data, we explore the underlying mechanisms and find that young men who belong to polygynous groups feel that they are treated more unequally and are readier to use violence in comparison to those belonging to monogamous groups.
• We have argued that, by definition, polygyny creates a social imbalance where a few, usually well-off, men marry many wives and many, usually poor, men marry late or never. Polygyny therefore systematically creates a surplus of young, poor, unmarried men: excess men.
• While our analysis focuses on Africa, we believe that the operating principles and societal implications of polygyny are—with few exceptions—universally problematic as they create a cohort of society that has always been associated with trouble around the world: excess men.

References:

• Koos C, Neupert-Wentz C. 2019. Polygynous Neighbors, Excess Men, and Intergroup Conflict in Rural Africa [Abstract]

Living with a step-parent is the greatest single risk factor for child abuse

Daly & Wilson (1988) presented an examination of the causes of child homicide through the lens of evolutionary psychology in their book Homicide.

They found that an American child living with one or more substitute parents in 1976 was 100 times more likely to be killed than a child living with its natural birth parents (Bachrach, 1983).

Similar trends were also discovered in Canada (Burch, 1985) with a child living with a stepparent having a 70 fold increase in risk of being killed if it lived with a step-parent. An examination of other data also found a 40-fold increase in risk severe child abuse in a Canadian sample (Daly & Wilson, 1985).

The risk of a child being murdered by a step-parent was found to be greatest when the child was an infant (aged 0-2 years old), with the risk steeply declining when the child was above the age of 5.

They concluded that step-parenthood clearly represented the single greatest risk factor for severe child abuse, with these studies controlling for factors such as parental income.

Later analysis (2007) of child abuse statistics found similar trends cross-culturally, with the children is a Swedish sample exhibiting the lowest elevated risk of being killed by a stepparent (8 times more likely), perhaps explicable by Sweden's generous welfare state putting less demands on stepparents (typically stepfathers) in terms of provision of offspring.

The phenomena of children in households with step-parents being at much greater risk of being abuse has been dubbed the Cinderella Effect, reflecting the preponderance of such figures as Cinderella's wicked step-mother in European and worldwide folklore and fairy-tales, demonstrating that this phenomena is not modern or recent, but has likely been found throughout all of human history.

The greatest Cinderella effect was found in Australia, drawing on the Australian Family Characteristics Survey. Strang (1996) found that in cases of fatal battery of babies, living with a stepfather as opposed to a biological father increased the risk by over three-hundredfold.

Discussion:

The authors stated that the 'social roles' hypothesis was inadequate in the case of child abuse committed by stepparents. The social role hypothesis states that step-parenthood is a stressful 'role' unclearly defined by societal norms, and that the stress caused by the nebulous nature of the role and the parent's consequence uncertainty is what leads to the greater incidence of abuse in such relationships.

They regard parental investment theory as a better explanation of the phenomena. It is not the 'role' that makes the stepparent uneasy, but the underlying conflict caused by the fact that they are expected to invest heavily in offspring that aren't their own and that they therefore do not see as worthy of such investment.

Investing resources in such children may be seen as evolutionarily maladaptive, as they are competitors for scarce resources with any children of their own that are produced by the relationship. It also creates tension because one is seen as sacrificing their own fitness interests in the favor of their partner, which is not generally seen in cases of adoption. It is common in the animal kingdom for a newly established dominant male to kill the young offspring produced by the defeated male, most notably seen in polygynous animals such as lions and gorillas. Infanticide for this purpose has likely been common throughout human evolutionary history also.

Such step-parent child conflict may also partly explained by the theory that a toddler has a adaptive interest in acting annoying and disruptive towards their parents in an attempt to interrupt their parent's sex lives. This is supposedly to prevent a potential competitor (in the form of a sibling) from being born too soon while the toddler still requires heavy investment from the parents.

While such behavior would generally be forgiven in the case of a biological parent, one would expect such disruptive behaviors to be far more likely to lead to violence against the child on behalf of a stepparent.

The purported existence of a 'Cinderella Effect' being driven by innate evolutionary fitness related motives has drawn extensive criticism over the years, with the subject being heavily politicized due to implications of such research being that serial monogamy, non-monogamy and single mothers are social phenomena that severely enhance the risk of children suffering serious abuse and neglect.

It is important to note that instances of severe child abuse are still rare, even in households with unrelated adults loco parentis, however step-parenthood likely does greatly enhance the risk of children falling victim to such crimes.

Quotes:

• Stepparenthood per se remains the single most powerful risk factor for child abuse that has yet been identified.
• American child living with one or more substitute parents in 1976 was therefore approximately 100 times as likely to be fatally abused as a child living with natural parents only.
• Evidence for Cinderella effects in nonlethal abuse is even more extensive. One kind of evidence comes from case data collected by child protection agencies, in which stepfamily households and stepparent perpetrators are greatly overrepresented relative to their prevalence in the population at large (e.g., Craissati McClurg, 1996; Creighton, 1985; Creighton Noyes, 1989; Cyr, Wright, McDuff, Perron, 2002; Daly Wilson, 1985; Gordon, 1989; Gordon Creighton, 1988; Kievens, Bayon, Sierra, 2000; Rodney, 1999; Sides Franke, 1989; Trocme et al., 2001; Wilson et al., 1980).
• More direct evidence of the stress associated with being stepchild comes from remarkable long-term study of child health in Dominica, where stepchildren exhibit reduced growth (Flinn, Leone, Quinlan, 1999) and have chronically higher circulating levels of the stress hormone cortisol (Flinn England, 1995; Flinn, Quinlan, Decker, Turner, England, 1996) than their age mates living with only their genetic parents under similar material circumstances in the same village.

References:

• Daly MC, Daly M. 1988. Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior.
• Daly MC, Wilson DJ. 2007. Is the "Cinderella Effect Controversial?. Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology. [Book]

Serial monogamy increases reproductive success in men but not in women

Abstract from the paper: Evolutionary theory predicts that males seek more sexual partners than females because of their higher fitness benefits from such a reproductive strategy. Accordingly, variance in numbers of partners and offspring is expected to be greater and association between mating and reproductive success to be stronger in males. Studies testing key predictions of this hypothesis in humans are lacking. Using data of 3700 men and 4010 women living in contemporary United States, we examined sex differences in the variance of number of spouses and offspring and in the association between spouse number and number of offspring. The results suggested a stronger selective advantage of serial monogamy in men than in women. Variance in spouse and offspring number was, respectively, 5% and 10% higher in men. In addition, the association between mating and reproductive success was stronger in men, so that men with 3 or more consecutive spouses had 19% more children than men with only spouse, whereas spouse number beyond the first partner was not associated with number of children in women. When the sample was stratified by ethnic group, the sex differences were stronger among Black and Hispanic participants than among White participants.

References:

• [Abstract]

Women with higher income expressed an even stronger preference for high-earning men

Quotes:

• Women with higher income expressed an even stronger preference for high-earning men than did women who were less financially successful

References:

• Buss DM, Schmitt DP. 2019. Mate Preferences and Their Behavioral Manifestations [Abstract]

Cucks

22.6% of U.S Airmen discovered their wives infidelity after returning from a year-long deployment

Quotes:

• Despite anecdotal reports of increased rates of infidelity during deployment, empirical findings are lacking. This study used a prospective design to examine the prevalence and risk factors of infidelity across the deployment cycle including a year-long deployment to Iraq.
• The rate of sexual infidelity prior to deployment (21%) was commensurate with the lifetime rate of sexual involvement outside the marriage in representative community samples of men. Across the deployment period, the prevalence of sexual infidelity was strikingly high (22.6%) compared with annual community estimates (1.5-4%; Allen et al., 2005).

• Balderrama-Durbin C, Stanton K, Snyder DK, Cigrang JA, Talcott GW, Slep AM, Heyman RE, Cassidy DG. 2017. The risk for marital infidelity across a year-long deployment [Abstract]

Women partnered to low income men are more prone to infidelity

Abstract from the paper: The nature of extra-relational sex in societies with rapidly changing sexual mores and widespread commercial sex remains under-explored. The 2006 Sexuality Survey of China provides a national probability survey with data on 3,567 people 18-49 years old who were in a marital (89%) or dating/cohabiting (11%) relationship. In attitudes, extramarital sex was completely unacceptable to 74% of women and 60% of men and either somewhat or completely unacceptable to 95% of women and men. Most (77%) women wanted severe punishment of men's short-term commercial sex and women's jealousy was equally elevated by their primary partner's episodes of commercial and non-commercial sex. Nevertheless, the prevalence of infidelity during the last 12 months was 4.5% (women's non-commercial sex), 11.0% (men's non-commercial), and 5.5% (men's commercial), with each percent matching or exceeding the median for other countries. In multivariate equations for non-commercial infidelity, men's infidelity was significantly more responsive to sexual dissatisfaction with his primary partner while women's was more responsive to deficits in love. In commercial sex, men were uninfluenced by primary partner deficits in love, sexual satisfaction or oral sex-pursuing, it would seem, simply a greater variety of sexual partners. In a "trading up" pattern, women partnered with low income men had elevated infidelity. The minority of women reporting early masturbation and premarital sex were just as likely as men with these backgrounds to have elevated infidelity. The Chinese patterns provide ample material for deliberations on gender similarities and differences in extra-relational sex.

References:

• Zhang N, Parish WL, Huang Y, Pan S. 2012. Sexual infidelity in China: Prevalence and gender-specific correlates [Abstract]

Tinder

Only 20% of Tinder users report having had one-night stands from using the app

Abstract from the paper: Several recent papers have established a link between personality and Tinder use, particularly with regards to sociosexuality and motivations for use. Following up our recent publication on dating apps and the studies linking Tinder and sociosexuality, we provide a more detailed investigation of the efficiency of using Tinder to acquire one-night stands or meet potential long-term committed relationship partners. Using self-reported data from 269 students (62% women), we find that a very large number of matches are required for a relative small number of meet ups, and result in a very limited number of hook-ups or potential romantic partner meetings. Merely 20% of the Tinder users in the sample have had one-night stands following Tinder use, and the majority of these only had one extra partner. The primary individual difference predictor of achieving casual sex using Tinder is unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and this also predicts fewer potential romantic partner meetings.

References:

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-019-00222-z

The Tinder economy has more inequality than 95.1% of all the world’s national economies.

Quotes:

• It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.
• The Gini coefficient for the Tinder economy based on “like” percentages was calculated to be 0.58. This means that the Tinder economy has more inequality than 95.1% of all the world’s national economies.
• According to this analysis a man of average attractiveness can only expect to be liked by slightly less than 1% of females (0.87%). This equates to 1 “like” for every 115 females.

References:

• https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a

Tinder users have higher levels of the 'dark triad' traits than non-users

Abstract from the paper: Tinder is the leading online dating application. This study (N = 271) explored the Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) and sociosexuality as correlates of Tinder use. The results revealed that Tinder users had higher scores on the Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality, compared to non-users. Also, Tinder users with higher scores on the Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality significantly showed greater motivation to use Tinder for short-term mating; however, there was no significant relation with Tinder use and motivation for long-term mating. This finding supports the idea that Tinder can be a new venue for people high on the Dark Triad to pursue their short-term mating strategies.

References:

• Sevi B. 2019. The Dark Side of Tinder: The Dark Triad of Personality as Correlates of Tinder Use [Abstract]

Politics

Leftists of both genders are less attractive than conservatives

Abstract from the paper: Physical attractiveness is an important social factor in our daily interactions. Scholars in social psychology provide evidence that attractiveness stereotypes and the “halo effect” are prominent in affecting the traits we attribute to others. However, the interest in attractiveness has not directly filtered down to questions of political behavior beyond candidates and elites. Utilizing measures of attractiveness across multiple surveys, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican. These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body intertwines with the social nature of politics.

References:

• Peterson RD, Palmer CL. 2017. Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs [Abstract]

Right wing politicians are generally more attractive than left-wing ones

Abstract from the paper: Since good-looking politicians win more votes, a beauty advantage for politicians on the left or on the right is bound to have political consequences. We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution. Our model of within-party competition predicts that voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism when they do not know much about candidates and that politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections. Evidence from real and experimental elections confirms both predictions.

References: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272716302201

Physically weak men prefer socialism, physically strong men do not

Abstract from the paper: Social bargaining models predict that men should calibrate their egalitarian attitudes to their formidability and/or attractiveness. A simple social bargaining model predicts a direct negative association between formidability/attractiveness and egalitarianism, whereas a more complex model predicts an association moderated by wealth. Our study tested both models with 171 men, using two sociopolitical egalitarianism measures: social dominance orientation and support for redistribution. Predictors included bodily formidability and attractiveness and four facial measures (attractiveness, dominance, masculinity, and width-to-height ratio). We also controlled for time spent lifting weights, and experimentally manipulated self-perceived formidability in an attempt to influence egalitarianism. Both the simple and complex social bargaining models received partial support: sociopolitical egalitarianism was negatively related to bodily formidability, but unrelated to other measures of bodily/facial formidability/attractiveness; and a formidability-wealth interaction did predict variance in support for redistribution, but the nature of this interaction differed somewhat from that reported in previous research. Results of the experimental manipulation suggested that egalitarianism is unaffected by self-perceived formidability in the immediate short-term. In sum, results provided some support for both the simple and complex social bargaining models, but suggested that further research is needed to explain why male formidability/attractiveness and egalitarianism are so often negatively related.

References:

• [Article]

Political extremists report having more sex

Data: (estimated annual occasions of sexual activity by selected characteristics, adjusted and unadjusted for differences in age, race and marital status, 1989-97, GSS):

Ideology	Adjusted	Unadjusted
Extreme liberal	73	72
Liberal	62	62
Slight liberal	63	60
Moderate	60	60
Slight conservative	55	54
Conservative	52	54
Extreme conservative	59	62

References:

• [FullText] (page 23)

Conservatives have less distinct preferences regarding long and short-term partners

Abstract from the paper: When choosing a mate, humans favour genetic traits (attractiveness, high sex drive) for short-term relationships and parental traits (warmth, high status) for long-term relationships. These preferences serve to maximise fitness of future offspring. But this model neglects the role of social norms in shaping evolved mating strategies. For example, in conservative cultures, individuals are likely to face costs such as punishment for short-term mating. Here we show that conservatives over-perceive some mates' suitability as long-term partners. Study 1 found that conservatives were less likely to use a short-term strategy that was distinctive from their long-term strategy. Study 2 showed that conservatives over-perceived hypothetical mates as long-term investing partners, despite their lack of commitment-compatible traits. Conservatism was measured at the regional- (India, USA, UK) and individual-level. Our results demonstrate how social norms may bias behaviour. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for more sophisticated models, drawing on developments from evolutionary and social psychology.

References:

• Muggleton NK, Fincher CL. 2018. You're not my type: Do conservatives have a bias for seeing long-term mates? [Abstract]

Political conservatism may be mediated by a more monogamous mating strategy

Abstract from the paper: Multiple recent studies report that measures of pathogen avoidance (e.g., disgust sensitivity) correlate with political ideology. This relationship has been interpreted as suggesting that certain political views (specifically, those views that are categorized as socially conservative) function to mitigate the pathogen threats posed either by intergroup interactions or by departures from traditional societal norms, which sometimes evolve culturally for anti-pathogen functions. We propose and test the alternative hypothesis that pathogen avoidance relates to conservatism indirectly via sexual strategies (e.g., relatively monogamous versus relatively promiscuous). Specifically, we argue that individuals who are more invested in avoiding pathogens follow a more monogamous mating strategy to mitigate against pathogens transmitted during sexual contact, and individuals following a more monogamous mating strategy adopt socially conservative political ideologies to support their reproductive interests. Results from three studies (N's = 819, 238, and 248) using multiple measures of pathogen avoidance, sexual strategies, and ideology support this account, with sexual strategies fully mediating the relationship between measures of pathogen avoidance and conservatism in each study.

References:

• Tybur JM, Inbar Y, Güler E, Molho C. 2015. Is the relationship between pathogen avoidance and ideological conservatism explained by sexual strategies? [Abstract]

More physically attractive politicians receive vastly more votes

Abstract from the paper: Judges ratings of physical appearance were obtained for 79 candidates who had competed for 21 parliamentary seats during the 1972 Canadian federal election. A comparison was made between the number of votes obtained by attractive and unattractive candidates. As predicted, the results indicate that attractive candidates averaged more votes than unattractive ones (32% vs 11%, p < 0. 001). An unexpected finding was that the politically unpopular parties were represented by physically unattractive candidates. Only a single member of the political fringe groups obtained an appearance score which was above the median for the entire group (p = 0.0001). Several possible causes of the relation between party affiliation and appearance were discussed

References:

• Efrain MG, Patterson, EWJ. 1974. Voters vote beautiful: The effect of physical appearance on a national election. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement. 6(4): pp 352–356. [Abstract]

Sluts

Promiscuous females have a stronger preference for more physically masculine males

Abstract from the paper: Sociosexual orientation reflects individual differences in openness to short-term sexual relationships. We predicted that women with less restricted sociosexuality would be differentially attracted to highly masculinized male faces and bodies. In 2 studies, we investigated preference for male masculinization as a function of female sociosexuality. In Study 1, 40 female university students rated the attractiveness of pictures of male faces and somatotypes differing in masculinization level. All women preferred the faces with average levels of masculinity and the mesomorph somatotype; however, women with less restricted sociosexuality found the faces of men more attractive in general and showed relatively greater preference for masculinized bodies than did women with more restricted sociosexuality. In Study 2, 56 women met with 2 equally attractive male confederates, 1 highly masculinized and 1 less masculinized, in a "speed dating" scenario. After each date, women indicated their interest in each man for short-term and long-term relationships via questionnaire. In this more naturalistic context, sociosexuality was related to an increased interest for the more highly masculinized man in the context of short-term dating. Female sociosexuality appears to be related to preferences for higher levels of male masculinization.

References:

• Provost MP, Kormos C, Kosakoski G, Quinsey VL. 2006. Sociosexuality in women and preference for facial masculinization and somatotype in men [Abstract]

Hormonal contraceptives reduce female pair bonding ability

Women given a intranasal dose of the hormone oxytocin, a hormone crucial in social bonding, were more attracted to their partner's face relative to other people. This effect was absent in women who were using hormonal contraceptives ("the pill"). This may have implications for the stability of relationships in societies where hormonal contraceptives are common.

References:

• Dirk Scheele, Jessica Plota, Birgit Stoffel-Wagner, Wolfgang Maier, René Hurlemann, Hormonal contraceptives suppress oxytocin-induced brain reward responses to the partner’s face, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 11, Issue 5, May 2016, Pages 767–774 [FullText]

A woman's history of vaginal orgasm is discernible from her walk

Abstract from the paper:

INTRODUCTION:

Research has demonstrated the association between vaginal orgasm and better mental health. Some theories of psychotherapy assert a link between muscle blocks and disturbances of both character and sexual function. In Functional-Sexological therapy, one focus of treatment is amelioration of voluntary movement. The present study examines the association of general everyday body movement with history of vaginal orgasm.

AIM:

The objective was to determine if appropriately trained sexologists could infer women's history of vaginal orgasm from observing only their gait.

METHODS:

Women with known histories of either vaginal orgasm or vaginal anorgasmia were videotaped walking on the street, and their orgasmic status was judged by sexologists blind to their history.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE:

The concordance between having had orgasms triggered by penile-vaginal intercourse (not orgasm from direct clitoral stimulation) and raters' inferences of vaginal orgasm history based on observation of the woman's walk was the main outcome measure.

RESULTS:

In the sample of healthy young Belgian women (half of whom were vaginally orgasmic), history of vaginal orgasm (triggered solely by penile-vaginal intercourse) was diagnosable at far better than chance level (81.25% correct, Fisher's Exact Test P < 0.05) by appropriately trained sexologists. Clitoral orgasm history was unrelated to both ratings and to vaginal orgasm history. Exploratory analyses suggest that greater pelvic and vertebral rotation and stride length might be characteristic of the gait of women who have experienced vaginal orgasm (r = 0.51, P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS:

The discerning observer may infer women's experience of vaginal orgasm from a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality, freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles. Results are discussed with regard to previous research on gait, the effect of the musculature on sexual function, the special nature of vaginal orgasm, and implications for sexual therapy.

References:

• [Abstract]

Health

Both voluntary and involuntary celibacy are related to poorer mental health

Abstract from the paper: The present study tested the hypothesis that single young adults who perceive their singlehood as voluntary would report a higher level of positive mental health (i.e., emotional, psychological and social well-being), lower levels of mental health illness (i.e., somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, severe depression) and romantic loneliness in comparison to young adults who perceive their singlehood as involuntary. This paper also investigated whether romantic loneliness mediates the relationship between voluntary and involuntary singlehood, positive mental health, and mental health illness. The study sample included 151 participants (86 females and 65 males) aged 20-26 (M = 22.48, SD = 2.01) from Poland. The main findings were that voluntarily single young adults reported a lower level of romantic loneliness compared to involuntarily single young adults. The two groups differed neither in regard to positive mental health nor in regard to mental health problems. In addition, gender differences were observed solely in the domain of romantic loneliness, with women reporting greater romantic loneliness than men. The mediation analysis revealed that romantic loneliness does not mediate the relationship between voluntary and involuntary singlehood, positive mental health, and mental health illness. Voluntary and involuntary singlehood was predictive of somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, severe depression, and romantic loneliness.

Quotes:

• The main findings were that voluntarily single young adults reported a lower level of romantic loneliness compared to involuntarily single young adults. The two groups differed neither in regard to positive mental health nor in regard to mental health problems.
• The mediation analysis revealed that romantic loneliness does not mediate the relationship between voluntary and involuntary singlehood, positive mental health, and mental health illness. Voluntary and involuntary singlehood was predictive of somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, severe depression, and romantic loneliness.

References:

• Adamczyk K. 2017. Voluntary and Involuntary Singlehood and Young Adults’ Mental Health: an Investigation of Mediating Role of Romantic Loneliness [Abstract]

Being single is the largest social risk factor for men's suicide

Abstract: There were 8721 (0.12%) deaths from suicide during 2001–2008. All psychiatric disorders were strong risk factors for suicide among both women and men. Depression was the strongest risk factor, with a greater than 15-fold risk among women or men and even higher risks (up to 32-fold) within the first 3 months of diagnosis. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, spine disorders, asthma and stroke were significant risk factors among both women and men (1.4–2.1-fold risks) whereas diabetes and ischemic heart disease were modest risk factors only among men (1.2–1.4-fold risks). Sociodemographic risk factors included male sex, unmarried status or non-employment; and low education or income among men.

References:

• Crump C. Sundquist K. Sundquist J. Winkleby MA. 2014. Sociodemographic, psychiatric and somatic risk factors for suicide: a Swedish national cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 44:2:pp 279-89. [Abstract]

ItsOver

Loneliness and mental health problems are rising for both genders

From the first article: In 2010, The Mental Health Foundation in the U.K. found that loneliness was a bigger problem among the young than the old. The 18-34 year-olds in an extensive study were more likely to feel lonely often, to worry about feeling alone and to feel depressed because of loneliness than those over 55.

Lynn Renwick would agree. Renwick runs a drop-in to help lonely youth in Newcastle, England in the summer, “Loneliness is not just an issue for older people in our community and many young people come to us for help to socialise with other young people." She said in an article for NE Connected online.

References:

• 2016. Is Loneliness a Rising Epidemic in Young People? friendmatch.com [News]
• Sheridan M. Anxiety & Depression – Chemical Imbalance or Dietary Disaster? coachmikeblogs.com [News]
• Heid M. 2019. Depression and Suicide Rates Are Rising Sharply in Young Americans, New Report Says. This May Be One Reason Why. time.com [News]
• Ducharme J. 2019. U.S. Suicide Rates Are the Highest They've Been Since World War II. time.com [News]

Miscellaneous

• https://muchneeded.com/tinder-statistics/ All sorts of Tinder stats