Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, and tendency towards aggression. Such variation may be innate, learned, or both. Modern research attempts to distinguish between these causes and to analyze any ethical concerns raised. Since behavior is a result of interactions between nature and nurture, researchers are interested in investigating how biology and environment interact to produce such differences, although this is often not possible.
The empathising–systemising (E–S) theory is a theory on the psychological basis of autism and male–female neurological differences originally put forward by English clinical psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. It classifies individuals based on abilities in empathic thinking (E) and systematic thinking (S). It measures skills using an Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemising Quotient (SQ) and attempts to explain the social and communication symptoms in autism spectrum disorders as deficits and delays in empathy combined with intact or superior systemising.
Gender incongruence is the state of having a gender identity that does not correspond to one's sex assigned at birth. This is experienced by people who identify as transgender or transsexual, and often results in gender dysphoria. The causes of gender incongruence have been studied for decades.
Though the terms sex and gender have been used interchangeably since at least the fourteenth century, in contemporary academic literature they usually have distinct meanings. Sex generally refers to an organism's biological sex, while gender usually refers to either social roles typically associated with the sex of a person or personal identification of one's own gender based on an internal awareness. While in ordinary speech, the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, most contemporary social scientists, behavioral scientists and biologists, many legal systems and government bodies, and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO make a distinction between gender and sex.
Louann Brizendine is an American scientist, a neuropsychiatrist who is both a researcher and a clinician and professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is the author of three books: The Female Brain (2006), The Male Brain (2010), and The Upgrade (2022).
Stephen Marc Breedlove is the Barnett Rosenberg professor of Neuroscience at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He was born and raised in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. After graduating from Central High School in 1972, he earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Yale University in 1976, and a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA in 1982. He was a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley from 1982 to 2003, moving to Michigan State in 2001. He works in the fields of Behavioral Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Biological Sciences section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Leonard Sax is an American psychologist and a practicing family physician. He is best known as the author of three books for parents: Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and Why Gender Matters. According to his web site, he is currently employed as a physician at a healthcare facility in Chester County Pennsylvania, where he also resides.
Brain Gender is a book by Melissa Hines, Hines graduated with an undergraduate degree from Princeton, following through with a doctorate in psychology from UCLA. Currently, Hines is a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge.
Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British philosopher of science, psychologist, and writer. She is a full professor in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Fine has written three popular science books on the topics of social cognition, neuroscience, and the popular myths of sex differences. Her latest book, Testosterone Rex, won the Royal Society Science Book Prize, 2017. She has authored several academic book chapters and numerous academic publications. Fine is also noted for coining the term 'neurosexism'.
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference is a 2010 book by Cordelia Fine, written to debunk the idea that men and women are hardwired with different interests. The author criticizes claimed evidence of the existence of innate biological differences between men and women's minds as being faulty and exaggerated, and while taking a position of agnosticism with respect to inherent differences relating to interest/skill in "understanding the world" versus "understanding people", reviews literature demonstrating how cultural and societal beliefs contribute to sex differences.
Language Log is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, is an American feminist scientist and gender studies scholar. Her research focuses on social medical science, sex, gender, sexuality, and epidemiology. She is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College.
The neuroscience of sex differences is the study of characteristics that separate the male and female brains. Psychological sex differences are thought by some to reflect the interaction of genes, hormones, and social learning on brain development throughout the lifespan.
Sex differences in humans have been studied in a variety of fields. Sex determination occurs by the presence or absence of a Y in the 23rd pair of chromosomes in the human genome. Phenotypic sex refers to an individual's sex as determined by their internal and external genitalia and expression of secondary sex characteristics.
Gina Rippon is a British neurobiologist and feminist. She is a professor emeritus of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Rippon has also sat on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology. In 2019, Rippon published her book, Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, which investigates the role of life experiences and biology in brain development.
Anelis Kaiser is professor of gender studies at MINT, University of Freiburg, Germany. She is also on the lecturer within the social psychology and social neuroscience department at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Along with Isabelle Dussauge, Kaiser was a guest editor of a special issue on Neuroscience and sex/gender of the journal Neuroethics, they also co-founded The NeuroGenderings Network together.
The NeuroGenderings Network is an international group of researchers in neuroscience and gender studies. Members of the network study how the complexities of social norms, varied life experiences, details of laboratory conditions and biology interact to affect the results of neuroscientific research. Working under the label of "neurofeminism", they aim to critically analyze how the field of neuroscience operates, and to build an understanding of brain and gender that goes beyond gender essentialism while still treating the brain as fundamentally material. Its founding was part of a period of increased interest and activity in interdisciplinary research connecting neuroscience and the social sciences.
Daphna Joel is an Israeli neuroscientist and advocate for neurofeminism. She is best known for her research which claims that there is no such thing as a "male brain" or a "female brain". Joel's research has been criticized by other neuroscientists who argue that male and female brains, on average, show distinct differences and can be classified with a high level of accuracy. Joel is a member of The NeuroGenderings Network, an international group of researchers in gender studies and neuroscience. They are critical of what they call 'neurosexism' in the scientific community. Joel has given lectures on her work in both scientific and lay conventions around the world.
The Female Brain is a 2017 American comedy film directed by Whitney Cummings and written by Neal Brennan and Cummings. It is based on the 2006 book The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. The film stars Cummings, Sofía Vergara, Toby Kebbell, James Marsden, Deon Cole, Lucy Punch, Beanie Feldstein and Cecily Strong.
Neurosexism is an alleged bias in the neuroscience of sex differences towards reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes. The term was coined by feminist scholar Cordelia Fine in a 2008 article and popularised by her 2010 book Delusions of Gender. The concept is now widely used by critics of the neuroscience of sex differences in neuroscience, neuroethics and philosophy.
