It seems gender roles are innate.

Monkey boys prefer cars to dolls.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08000949

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127210527.htm

Regards,

Joachim

Thank you Joachim!

I was supposing something like that, but your suggested references provide a strong support for this path of reasoning! Not so socially determined, but genetic.

GREAT!

Regards,

Velina

Hi Velina!

The results you report are interesting and, indeed, in need of explanation.

Let me begin by saying that the opposition innate versus acquired, as well as the frequent dichotomies, such as nature versus nurture, individual versus social, biological versus psychological -- which still pervade the field of psychology -- are a reminiscence of a positivistic tradition still existing in science in general. As such, I think that is pointless to framing nature as opposed to nurture, innate as opposed to acquired, and the like, when explaining inter and even intra-individual psychological differences of several type, 

There was a time at which one asked, for example, what was it more important -- nature or nurture --  while explaining, for example, inter-individual differences, be they related to gender, ethnicity, and so forth?  It is now evident that this problem should not be seen as a either-or-problem for one's nature influences one's nurture, and the other way around. The either-or-perspective was followed by, say, the how much perspective, that is, how much does one's nature, genes, neurons, and the like, and how much does one's nature, environment, and so forth, explain  inter-individual differences of any psychological kind? It is now also evident that it is impossible to quantity the respective influence of nature and nurture, for example, on inter-individual psychological differences, just because nature influences nurture and vice-versa.The present-day position does not raise the what question, nor does it raise the how much question, but rather the how question. That is, how, in a certain circumstance and context, nature and nurture, for example, interact each other in order to produce intra and inter-individual psychological differences.  

Specifically, you say that the differences  you report "displayed match the image of 'men-hunters' and 'women-gatherers'. It is natural that this difference reflects an evolutionary adaption, which should not be seen as opposed to nurture and cultural differences. I am thinking of Gilligan's (1982) seminal book, "In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development". Harvard: Harvard University Press, whose main claim is that men and women speak in a relatively different voice. Men speak, so to say, mainly an instrumentally-oriented voice,  which is relatively consistent with the idea of "men-hunters". In contradistinction, women speak, as it were, mainly an expressively-oriented voice, which is relatively consistent with the idea of "'women-gatherers". It is worth mentioning that Gilligan's initial opposition between women's voice -- a voice oriented to care and responsibility -- and men's voice -- a voice oriented to justice and rights -- was mitigated as she advanced in her scientific career.

I hope that I have got your question and that this helps.

Best regards and thank you for sharing your interesting results with other Research Gate members,

Hi Orlando!

Thank you very much for the reasoning involved in the explanation you provide! I will read the suggested sources. Thank you a lot for evaluating our results as being of interest!

You are right, we cannot reason using such oppositions as all the parameters of  the individuals, the society, the civilization, the living matter and the world develop in interdependency. That is why, I agree, the right question should be “the how question”.

I will try to reformulate in these terms our general wondering. It comes out that there exists a statistically important gender difference between the rates of acquisition of different conceptual categories. In the initial period of language production, when children start expressing their thoughts, girls acquire quickly and use increasingly concepts about body parts, humans and society, indoor category, animals and proprio- and interoception, whereas boys use increasingly nouns for actions and tools, outdoor, perception, moving objects and communication. How does this happen?

If we suppose that the process of evolution has led to the existence of two genders (which can be explained with optimization principles leading to the improved  quality of the genetic information transferred), the result – existence of genders - should have a big importance in the development of the living matter. Humans live as individuals, in a society and have their gender. They exist because they behave in an “intelligent” way, they reach knowledge necessary for their survival and their societies create cultures which allow them leaving in all latitudes.

How their intelligence is “made” ? (With as many of its parameters that we can detect and investigate, including psychological.) I suspect that a part of the intelligence is related to the different roles and, accordingly, behavior (individual and social) of the genders. I suspect, too, that the differences which showed up from the statistical analyses are genetically determined, that they are a result of long evolution and that they are implemented in the social and the personal intelligence of humans. But I am not a specialist in these fields.

Your suggestion “It is natural that this difference reflects an evolutionary adaption, which should not be seen as opposed to nurture and cultural differences.” corresponds perfectly to my reasoning, which stays however this of an engineer.

THANK YOU!

Velina

One for Joachim. Timid boy to my daughter and her friends (kids were about 8 years old at the time). "Are you tomboys?"

My daughter's friend replied "If you mean do we like climbing trees and shooting guns at people, the answer is yes."

I would look for strong media enforcement of stereotyping through childrens' TV channels, computer games etc.

Hi Velina,

Thank you very much for your thoughts an the information provided.

I know of many fields (e.g., aggression) where are gender differences, with males being generally more aggressive than females. One's biological heritage should play a role in these differences. Note however, that genes and maturation simply open up a series of possibilities, but without necessarily giving rise to their actualization. This means that there is a long way from our genes, molecules an the like to our aggressive, pro-social and verbal and linguistic performances. In other words, one's genes always operate, so to say, in a certain language-game, if I can borrow from Wittgnestein's semninal book: Philosophical Investigations. So, as I said before, and you share, as far as gender differences are concerned, the question to raise is not to ask "the what" or the "how much" questions, but the question "how" one's genes and one's physical and social worlds interact with each other in a given circumstance.  Gender roles, to mention an example, cannot be only innate. I know of men who perform the so-called female roles (e.g., caregiving) better than women, and the other way around. If gender roles were innate, how does one explain that gender roles greatly vary through different countries and countries? More to the point, day by day, women and men come to play similar roles, professions and the like. 

Best regards,

Hi Orlando!

I agree. Genes alone do not determine what exactly will happen with the individual. They represent the basis which can be developed. Or can be Not developed. Genes give however the envelope.

You say: “If gender roles were innate, how does one explain that gender roles greatly vary through different countries and countries?”

I don’t know. Which roles?  Conceptualization preferences at 10 to 60 months? We have not measured for other languages and for other cultures. It is indeed interesting to see what the data will show.

Well, concerning the language-games... In big, “My language is my world” is not a point that I share, as seen from the approach used in the study.

Best regards!

Hi Velina,

Thank you very much your reply. Your idea that genes give the envelope is a good metaphor for expressing my idea that genes open up a series of possibilities, but without necessarily giving rise to their actualization. We also share the idea that genes represent the basis which can be developed, or cannot be developed.

You ask which gender roles vary through cultures. In most African countries, agriculture, for example, is made mainly by women, which is not generally the case in the majority of Western societies.

Your result pointing to gender differences concerning conceptualization differences from 10 to 60 months is really interesting. It would be interesting that you could replicate this finding in other languages and countries. Note, however, that at 10 and 60 months, infants and children have already, so to say, a cultural history. Did you control for this possible variable?That is, had those boys and those girls the same cultural and even developmental history or trajectory? Note, for example, that, at least, in most Western societies we offer balls to boys and dolls to girls. Also baby grows often are in blue for boys, and in pink for girls.

It would also be nice to replicate such finding in older children and even adolescents. There are several psychologists, Piaget among them, who conceive of development as a "canalization" process. In other words, as development proceeds, it is less canalized or biologically determined than before and hence more subject to variables other than biological.

You say that your language is your world. I, like Wittgenstein, cannot but agree. It is not a mere coincidence that the language we master most is our mother-tongue.  Not because of our genes, but because of our culture. Of course, we need genes to speak every language. But we speak Bulgarian or Portuguese better than English because our proximal environment speaks more Portuguese or Bulgarian than English.

It has been an agreeable sensation to exchange ideas with you and other RG colleagues regarding the topic of gender roles. Of course, I think that we all agree that we can disagree. And this is wonderful. So is science. it should be, so to say, that is the force or reason, not the reason of force or power, which counts. Here I think that all agree with one another.

Best regards

Hi Orlando!

Yes, in African countries, and not only, agriculture, for example, is made mainly by women. I am not a specialist in psychology, but when analyzing let’s say à prima vista my observations, I think that women in African countries are not influenced by this fact to the extent that they do not behave like women. On the contrary, they seemed to me perfect in their women role. Let us not forget that in the Western world during several centuries women were strongly involved in agricultural activities. I will not even enumerate in what type of activities were involved women in Russia after the war. I don’t think they became less women-like.

Yes, I agree, at 10 and 60 months infants have already a cultural history, true. We have not controlled this factor as there is no data for it. The first child recorded at 11 months is already 50 years old. The last is recorded in 2015. We have different families living in different towns, the most part are in US, some children are British. They do certainly Not have the same cultural and even developmental history or trajectory. From where the relevance of the gender differences found.

Yes, in most Western societies you do offer balls to boys and dolls to girls. We, in the eastern part of the continent, do the same. In Africa they do it, and in Asia too. Following the studies that Joachim sent, we All give cars and balls to boys and to girls – dolls because they will in all cases prefer exactly these toys.

No, I said that I do Not share “My language is my world”, when you referred to Wittgenstein’s language games. Such point contradicts my understandings in the domain of cognition.

Best regards

Hi Velina,

I thought it interesting that valuable emotions and speech reside on the same side in the female brain, while residing separately in the male brain. This explains for me why women can be too emotional even to speak at certain times, whereas the male in the same crisis and although grimly can speak. Furthermore, rather than the innate catchall, I believe a strong case can be made and probably has already for genotypes solely to have been derived environmentally from phenotypes, in turn originated in the will, or economical path of least resistance. Lastly an aside that is in a completely speculative (pun unintended) stage for me is that to me the right eye has an analytical (input) cast to it, while the left eye appears more synthetical (output) on any well, two-eyed creature.

Thank you, Cj Nev, for sharing your valuable reasoning on this.

The emotional story is quite unknown for now... Studies show, for example, that boys become less performent in emotion categorisation tasks when their facial muscles were blocked (partially) by overuse of pacifier and that this is not true for girls... Strange. This suggests that boys are predisposed to express emotion on their faces, which is seemngly not the case for girls. Perhaps, as you say, girls express emotion when speaking, involving it in the speech prosody. I am unfortunately not aware of such studies.

Concerning emotion and the so-called basic emotions that you mention, introduced by Ekman and enlarged, there are no reliable evidences that they are represented as such at the brain level. It seems that what exists represented there are the so-called emotion dimentions, more precisely - valence and arousal and that the concept of a given emotion is a result of multipath paralel treatment over the entier brain, including, of course, the limbic system. My colleague Richard Traub did recently an extended analysis of everithing in the field and did not mention he found some studies reporting important gender differences.

I am very intrigued by the fact that you relate emotion with conceptualisation. Is this becouse you have reasons to relate them? Or this is a spontaneous proposal?

No problem, Velina. I relate emotion and conceptualization merely as to from where they emmanate differently in the male and female brains and to see if you have come across that in your research. Let me locate a reference on the topic...

Hi Velina, I see this is very much ongoing research and could only locate the following from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/jakabovics/mf2.html:

"Since they [men] use one side of their brain more than the other, they tend to use the left side for verbal reasoning and the right for visual and emotional activities (if they are right handed)."

Thank you, Cj Nev!

I will look attetively to the reference you sent. Just a comment to the text you sent - the language-related brain area is situated on the left perifrontal cortex for both - men and women. No evidence, untill now, for some gender differences in location and the structure of the known Broca's zone (Brodmann 44-45).

Perhaps there is something of new - I will look in the ref you sent, thank you again!

Cl Nev, hi, the link you provide does not work for me. (?)

"Error 404

www.columbia.edu Sun May 5 06:23:09 2019 Apache "

Hi,

Differences can be explained by cultural expectations. We don't interact with newborns in the same way if they are boys or girls. Even in utero, if you believe you are having a boy or a girl, parents and people around you will speak differently. This is then compounded throughout life.

Thank you, Elisabeth!

So, you propose that the differences in the vocabulary are due to the different words to wich boys and girls are exposed and to the different conversations and activities in which they are iinvolved. In big, this suggests that the result observed in our study is due to statistical learnning. ... Becouse we have not data for other things, only words. So, a good experiment to test this hypothesis would be to behaive with a boy thinking that he is girl. If in 4 years the boy behaives, speaks, is interested in etc as a girl, this hypothesis is supported. Noone can do this, of course.

Thank you very much for this suggestion. It supposes that boys and girls behaive in compliance with the social expectation about their behaiviour.

To reject the hypothesis that the social expectation reflects the genetically underwritten predispositions, one has to show that the social expectation is influenced by the historical period, the type of the society etc. factors which are not related to biology. I am not aware of such results and will be very thankfull if you send me some links.

Thank you in advance!

Velina

Hi Velina, sorry the link included the colon which tripped it up, here's without and works:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/jakabovics/mf2.html

Thanks for pointing it out to me.

Hi Velina, yes language is located in the same place, but emotion is separate from that place in the male brain, while resides together in the same location with language in the female brain. From that and if I understood correctly and that mapping remains true, I deduced an explanation for why females have difficulty talking when emotional and males although as emotional do not.

Hi Cj Nev, as I explained, I am not aware of studies showing that emotions are located differently in the male and famale brains. I will be glad if you send or refer to some studies that confirm this very important finding. Thank you again!

Concerning the link - it works for me now, thank you! Please, note that I am not a specialist in brain structures, however, I followed several hard courses in brain structures and functions and the picture you sent the link to is more than clear to me. However - I highly appreciate your efforts to be helpfull in increasing my knowledge in this area.

Hi Velina Slavova ,

I'll have to dig through class notes to find references but I know that there are studies out there that show we use a more complex and diverse vocabulary with girls than boys.

In my undergrad, we discussed as study where infants were placed in couples' arms and were told it was a boy/a girl. They then observed their interactions with the baby. If a "girl" cried, the adults would speak, sing, interact verbally. If a "boy" cried, they would rock it, move around, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have the reference for it.

You may also want to look into feminist psychology. They have done huge amounts of research into the nature/nurture debate around sex and gender differences between people.

As you can tell, I'm very much on the side of gender differences as acquired concepts not innate or biological ones :). I would turn your suggestion around and say that as long as we can't treat men and women in exactly the same way, we can't say that there is a biological difference (and by extension girls and boys).

Have you also looked at more gender-equal societies to see if there are the same findings as in your study? Scandinavia comes to mind.

All the best in your research.

Perhaps the article by Kret and Gelder (2012) on sex differences in processing emotional signals can help you (doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.12.022).

Best of luck in your research.

This is not really my field, but the topic is of great interest. I suspect that much of 'current' believed differences between female and male brains can be explained by social factors, not genetic predisposition or physical difference ( in size or brain chemistry). You may be interested in the book by Gina Rippon 'The Gendered Brain', which challenges many assumptions and the many rather skewed studies on which so much of 'current' female/male differences are founded.

Thank you very much, James.

Yes, it is quite interesting to know. I do not think that the form or the areas of the brain are different... I think the innate mechanism related to the manner of constructing the neural paths is differently settled. I think this is evolutionary determined. No studies showing this for now.

I wonder how do sources like the one you sent (thank you!) consider facts such as these that Joachim sent. Please, follow the links that he provided:

2 years ago @Joachim Pimiskern "It seems gender roles are innate. Monkey boys prefer cars to dolls. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08000949 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127210527.htm Regards, Joachim"

Regards,

Velina

The monkey boys article is very old (2008?) and there are specific problems in the paper. The criticisms of th study are that the toys were grouped 'gender-stereotypically' (i.e. together in gendered groups). Some items were viewed gendered (a ball!), when perhaps that judgement is poor. However, most significantly, the monkey boys played mostly with the gender-neutral furry dog and this was not really mentioned in the conclusion. Images chosen supported a skewed view of female behaviour ( the female monkey was pictured with the doll, even though this was not the most 'favoured' toy. When the toys were regrouped along non-gendered lines (animals together, objects etc) NO sex differences in monkey preference were found.

I can't answer all the points, but see Rippon 'The Gendered Brain' p223-7.

Dear James, agreed.

Here the results we had:

Girls acquire more actively noun-concepts related to:

Self - proprioception and interoception; Humans and society; Body parts; Indoor; Animals

Boys acquire more actively noun-concepts related to:

Perception; Actions and tools; Moving objects; Outdoor; Communication

I will see the ref!

THANK YOU!

James, I wonder... I cannot access the book, it is not deliverable at home. I will be very glad to have it somehow... For now, I saw the reviews.

I wonder - "the myth that men and women have different brains"

is not at all what I think and what our study suggests.

The problem, from my very basic point of view, is related to what Elisabeth did in their experiments. Obviously, we behave differently with boys and with girls. This is surely not because we assume that their brains are different. The question, very simply defined, is: what is primary - our attitude or the fact that in all cases boys and girls have different attitudes.

I have no answer.

Hi Velina,

Regarding your question "what comes first, our attitude towards children or their innate differences?", I think that several points would weigh on the nurture side of the debate:

- across cultures boys and girls are different but all boys are not the same (e.g. language acquisition could be different in India vs Cameroon, for example). If it was an innate proprety, boys or girls would be the same across cultures and continents. That is no the case.

- Most gender studies end up showing that there are more within-gender differences than between-gender ones. This is true on a wide breadth of studies, not just language.

Is there an e-mail address where I can send you info when I go through my notes and articles?

Dear Elisabeth, I will be very glad if you send to [email protected]!

Dear Velina,

Yes, I agree with Elisabeth. Nurture (social interaction and the creation and sustaining of gender/sex norms) seems to explain most differences - that is certainly the thrust of Rippon's book (I ordered it with my local bookshop). She has picked apart studies and claims about differences and either found the data to be poorly interpreted (often to fit a cognitive bias, based on an existing [unsubstantiated] historical premise), or unduly promoted because differences seem more attractive than commonalities -certainly as far as media reporting is concerned.

As unattractive as it may feel, women and men (at least from inception) seem to be mostly similar (the brain has no sex). It's only traditional gendering that leads to apparent differences, although many of these seem overstated.

I'm afraid the answer is not nearly as simple as most commentators here imply. it is virtually impossible to distinguish socialization from biological factors in naturally-occuring development, as in most social contexts socialization is correlated with sex (i.e., children of male sex get different socialization than children of female sex).

a second point is that indeed in many measures male/female differences on the average are quite small. but they are often consistent. these consistent and small differences in the means sometimes represent large differences in the tails of the distribution. For example, mean male/female differences in aggression are not as large as the ratio of males to females in serious aggressive crimes.

Ariel, thank you a lot.

This is what I think, too.

My general reasoning is that we cannot distinguish properly many behavioral differences (which, as you mention, appear as a stable component), from the mechanisms of concept formation. Concept formation, to me, is a process which is rooted very deeply in the brain, including the feeling-emotional layers. These layers function related with e.g. hormonal issues. And who knows what else.

As an example, perhaps exaggerated, one can always distinguish a female cat from a male cat, because they look, move, behave differently. Hunters prefer having female dogs as they are better in discovering... This does not mean that they have different brains, that the ones are cleverer or something like this... but that they have different manners of brain - guided functioning. I don't think we can separate the brain from the body.

All in all, I think that everything around the male/female brain are pure insinuations which have somewhat political parameter, I would say.

To add something to my reasoning. I annotated all the child speech data with parameters related to word's abstractness, iconicity, frequency of use in the (american) adults' speech etc. And we performed a stat analysis. There is NO statistical difference between boys and girls in the advancing of the e.g. use of more and more abstract concepts. The differences is clear with regards of which classes of concepts are acquired more from the ones and the others.

very interesting. thanks

Ariel, Velina, your discussions are very interesting...I'd be curious to know if you or anyone looked at differences in the input to the children, i.e., differences in input between same-gendered pairs vs cross-gendered pairs. In some cultures and subcultures, there are large differences in the input to infants, including age of onset at which parents start to talk to children (see "Ways with Words" by Shirley Brice-Heath for example). In that book, a in the lower SES African-American subculture of the times, input to female infants started later than input to male children....this difference may have changed since that book was written however. I wonder if the same phenomenon holds true among other subcultures where boys are higher status than girls starting from birth.

Thank you, Ronnie, for this question. I have tried to understand this too... Specialists in language acquisition told me that, at least in the UK, the data shows that parents speak More to girls than to boys. This is not the case of your example. So, who knows, this seems, for now, culture dependent, but I never met a study on this.

I imagine that everywhere parents say different things to boys and to girls. We have examined the dialogues and, for now, we have not found a difference. Perhaps we should look at this closer.

It is most definitely culturally dependent, and is especially prominent in some religious subcultures (the more religious the folks, the greater differences in the ways boy and girls are treated). In regards to your data, have you looked at quantitative differences in the input?

Shirley Brice-Heath is an anthropologist by the way.

We took the dialogues from the period that seemed to give a difference in the level of abstractness of the used concepts and did not find quantitative and qualitative (in terms of abstractness) differences in the child directed speech. https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_you_suggest_studies_on_gender_differences_in_language_acquisition_related_to_the_level_of_abstractness_of_the_words

I found this article enlighting when I first came across it, and I have it on mind when it comes to the debate of gender differences. You may know it already, but... just in case.

Child Dev. 1989 Feb;60(1):85-92.

Infant-mother face-to-face interaction: age and gender differences in coordination and the occurrence of miscoordination. Tronick EZ, Cohn JF

Thanks for sharing your investigation,

Dear Judith, I did not know this paper, it seems very relevant! Thank you!

Wow this conversation is fascinating! I agree that it is impossible to separate biological functioning (hormones, etc.) from concept formation, especially at the early ages. As far as the input component (i.e.speaking more to female children vs males etc.) I think there are too many factors to consider esp. concerning the primary caregiver (age, sex, education level, etc.). I am really interested in your findings and will read your article in more detail :)

Thank you, Jennifer!

We have no data to really build the profile of the caregiver, we have the age of the mother/father depending on who is participating in the dialogue. That is, the result we had shows a pattern which is independent.

What was your resource for the male-as-hunters and female-as-gatherers paradigm? How did you decide to use this to interpret your findings?

I tend to agree with you. I was just curious about your thought process.

I had no special thoughts... Males - Perception; Actions and tools; Moving objects; Outdoor; Communication

Females - Self - proprioception and interoception; Humans and society; Body parts; Indoor; Animals

One may name them differently than hunters and gatherers. I propose - outdoor equipped movers and indoor social sensors. Hah...

If we understand that childhood DOES NOT exist to produce good children, but exists to produce FUNCTIONING ADULTS than the differences between male conceptualizations and female conceptualization may make themselves apparent at an early age - so that they help produce the functioning male or female ready to take their place in adult society.

There is a new theory called DUAL MORALITY explained in a book titled Our Human Herds. It suggests that humans operate with two distinct moral patterns and use both to navigate the social world of people and groups.

It goes on to suggest that each of the two sexes specialized in one or the other of these moral patterns early in human evolution. With the female focusing on what we may regard as the liberal pattern of PROVIDING - and seeing all those under her care as EQUALLY DESERVING and where violence unjustified.

While necessity forced males to specialize in the other moral pattern, the "conservative" which focuses on PROTECTION ... seeing the world in this way, some are superior to others and some more valuable to the group; in this view violence can be justified when used in the service of good and right.

Thank you, Stephen, for this interesting path. Yes, social cognition has been shown to be based on brain networks that overlap dmn. I don't know much more. Childhood exists to prepare adults. In humans it is times longer than in all others.

I will think on your suggestion, thank you!