Investigating and reporting sex differences: Methodological importance, the forgotten consideration.

Comments on the article on guidelines for doing nonsexist research by M. C. McHugh et al (see record 1987-00069-001) and the ensuing debate on reporting sex differences in research. The authors argue the methodological importance of such reporting but also of distinguishing sex differences on a dependent variable from differences in sex-by-treatment interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reporting sex differences.

Comments on an article by M. D. McHugh et al (see record 1987-00069-001) advocating rules to limit the reporting of sex differences in psychological research. The present author takes issue with the views expressed and concludes that the complete and precise reporting of all sex comparisons should foster accurate scientific understanding of the importance—or unimportance—of sex and gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of sex on reporting pain

In many epidemiological pain studies, women more frequently report more intense, frequent and long-lasting or chronic transient pain than men. In our retrospective study including hospitalised patients referred to a pain centre, prevalence of headaches, musculoskeletal pain and somatoform pain was observed in women, as described in the literature. Generally pain intensity was higher in women and pain was more frequently controlled in men, but when intensity and pain control were compared according to the pain aetiologies, no gender difference was found. Drug treatments were adapted to pain aetiologies, which accounted for the observed differences. In hospitalised patients the significant differences observed in intensity, pain control and treatment reflect the heterogeneity of pain aetiologies rather than gender differences.     

On the advantages of reporting sex comparisons.

Refutes R. F. Baumeister's (see record 1989-14054-001) argument that the inclusion of sex-difference findings in research reports is undesirable from both political and scientific standpoints. A number of advantages stem from the study of sex differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A historical footnote on sex differences research.

Discusses the debate between J. Jastrow (1891, 1896) and M. W. Calkins (1896) regarding cognitive sex differences, and A. Tanner's (1896) suggestions for clarifying such differences. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early sex differences in empathy.

Replicated the N. D. Feshbach and S. Feshbach (see record 1969-08191-001) study which identified the tendency for 4-yr-old girls to be more empathic than boys ( p     

Gender and reporting differences in measures of depression.

135 female and 75 male undergraduates (aged 18–30 yrs) responded to the Beck Depression Inventory and to 9 items assessing depression from the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. The hypothesis was explored that males particularly would endorse test items in a less "depressed" direction when presented explicitly as constituting a test of depression, but would endorse more depressive content when items were presented in a context not portrayed as measuring depression. Some support was obtained for the view that males may approach and respond differently to depression inventories compared to females. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early sex differences in spatial skill.

This study investigated sex differences in young children's spatial skill. The authors developed a spatial transformation task, which showed a substantial male advantage by age 4 years 6 months. The size of this advantage was no more robust for rotation items than for translation items. This finding contrasts with studies of older children and adults, which report that sex differences are largest on mental rotation tasks. Comparable performance of boys and girls on a vocabulary task indicated that the male advantage on the spatial task was not attributable to an overall intellectual advantage of boys in the sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On sex differences in spatial abilities.

The present author agrees with the suggestions by P. J. Caplan et al (see record 1986-10956-001) that sex differences in average performance on spatial tasks are often modest in magnitude and inconsistent from one task to another and that spatial ability is not a unitary construct; however, their contentions that sex differences in spatial abilities are nonexistent and that the concept of spatial abilities is not sufficiently valid as to allow meaningful investigation of sex differences are challenged. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More on the sex?×?race interaction on cognitive measures.

A. R. Jensen (1971) proposed a Sex * Race interaction in cognitive ability to account for similar differences on measures influenced by ability. Recently, L. G. Humphreys et al (1976), analyzing one data source, concluded that sex differences themselves may account for a Sex * Race interaction. The Humphreys et al study, however, involved a possibly biased sample with limited ranges of socioeconomic status (SES), an important element in Jensen's proposal. The present investigation analyzed 3 sources of data: (a) the standardization sample for the WISC-R (1,870 White and 305 Black 6-16 yr olds); (b) Project TALENT (3,371 White and 208 Black 9th graders); (c) Educational Quality Assessment of the State of Pennsylvania (152, 944 5th, 8th, and 11th graders--95% White). Analysis failed to reveal a Sex * Race or Sex * SES interaction. It is suggested that Sex * Race differences in income, education, and so on could be the result of racially related sex role expectations or cultural prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental sex differences in global-local perceptual bias.

Previous developmental studies have indicated that boys tend to perform better than girls on tasks associated with the right hemisphere (e.g., spatial tasks), whereas girls perform better on tasks associated with the left hemisphere (e.g., verbal tasks). Extending this body of literature to what is known about hemispheric specialization of visuospatial processing, we predicted that boys would be more global than girls in their perception of visual hierarchical stimuli. Forty girls and 39 boys between the ages of 4 and 12 years were administered a perceptual judgment task previously used by Kimchi and Palmer (see record 1983-02534-001). Boys were significantly more global in their perceptual judgments than girls at all ages. Younger children of both sexes were less global than older children. Results were consistent with developmental models that suggest an early left-hemisphere advantage for girls and a right-hemisphere advantage for boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The importance of theory for evaluating evidence on sex differences.

Comments on the article by J. S. Hyde (see record 2005-11115-001), in which Hyde provided an overview of the many meta-analyses that have compared men and women on psychological attributes. The current author argues that, despite the strengths of Hyde's study, a major problem with the analysis is its lack of a theoretical basis for considering sex differences in psychological attributes. He suggests that over the last 20 years, our knowledge has been advanced by the advent of meta-analysis but also by the introduction of coherent theoretical accounts; it is unfortunate that Hyde's article did not recognize the theoretical advances as well as the methodological ones. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Once again, the origins of sex differences.

Responds to comments by B. X. Friedman et al (see record 2000-05933-013), D. T. Kenrick and N. Li (see record 2000-05933-014), and E. Kleyman (see record 2000-05933-015) on the article by A. H. Eagly and W. Wood (see record 1999-05337-002) which examined the origins of sex differences in human behavior. Eagly and Wood argued that social structural theory can explain the origin of psychological sex differences. In the present article, Eagly and Wood defend their original article against criticism made by the aforementioned authors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revisiting sex differences in the expression of depression.

251 male and 390 female college students indicated the degree to which they would engage in a number of behaviors or cognitions if depressed and completed the Beck Depression Inventory. The rated items were gathered using procedures suggested by the behavioral-analytic model. Factor analyses were employed to categorize items into interpretable variables. Stepwise discriminant function analyses were performed to determine maximum separation of male and female groups. Men and women showed distinct differences in the nature of their interpersonal behaviors as well as in cognitive styles for coping with depression. Findings suggest that there are sex differences in the expression of depression even in predominantly normal populations and reinforce the value of investigating theories of depression in the context of a continuity between normal mood states and depressive phenomena. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive sex differences and mathematics and science achievement.

Comments on the original article "Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?: A Critical Review," by E. S. Spelke (see record 2005-15840-001). Spelke considered "three claims that cognitive sex differences account for the differential representation of men and women in high-level careers in mathematics and science." The focus of this comment is on the claim regarding gender differences in mean levels of cognitive abilities. Spelke claimed (p. 954) that "most investigators of sex differences have concluded that males and females have equal cognitive ability, with somewhat different profiles." There are two major components to this comment. The first is mainly theoretical, and the second is both theoretical and empirical. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological sex differences: Origins through sexual selection.

Men and women clearly differ in some psychological domains. A. H. Eagly (see record 1995-21141-001) shows that these differences are not artifactual or unstable. Ideally, the next scientific step is to develop a cogent explanatory framework for understanding why the sexes differ in some psychological domains and not in others and for generating accurate predictions about sex differences as yet undiscovered. This article offers a brief outline of an explanatory framework for psychological sex differences—one that is anchored in the new theoretical paradigm of evolutionary psychology. Men and women differ, in this view, in domains in which they have faced different adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. In all other domains, the sexes are predicted to be psychologically similar. Evolutionary psychology jettisons the false dichotomy between biology and environment and provides a powerful metatheory of why sex differences exist, where they exist, and in what contexts they are expressed (D. M. Buss, 1995). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The evolution of sex differences in spatial ability.

It is widely believed that male mammals have better spatial ability than females. A large number of evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed to explain these differences, but few species have been tested. The authors critically review the proposed evolutionary explanations for sex differences in spatial cognition and conclude that most of the hypotheses are either logically flawed or, as yet, have no substantial support. Few of the data exclusively support or exclude any current hypotheses. The hypothesis with the strongest support proposes that range size was the selection pressure that acted to increase spatial ability. The authors suggest ways in which these hypotheses could be tested by presenting explicit predictions and suggesting suitable test species or conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evolutionary psychology and the search for sex differences.

Comments on D. M. Buss' (see record 1995-21138-001) comment on A. H. Eagly's (See PA, Vol 82:21141) discussion comparing the sexes in scientific research. The author disagrees with Buss' use of the paternity hypothesis as the evolutionary basis for human gender differences. The author believes that feminist theory provides a more parsimonious theoretical perspective for most observed gender differences in human behavior and argues that a focus on gender differences, rather than gender overlap, is not representative of current theories about evolutionary adaptation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meta-analytic review of sex differences in group performance.

To examine the impact of sex composition of groups on productivity, a meta-analytic review was conducted on the findings of past laboratory research. Two classes of factors were distinguished to account for any performance differences obtained: (a) task contents or settings that favor the interests and abilities of one sex over the other and (b) group-level factors, such as men's and women's interaction, in particular, the tendency for men in groups to offer opinions and suggestions and the tendency for women to act friendly and agree with others. Overall, all-male groups were found to perform better than all-female ones. This appeared due to tasks or settings that favored men's interests and abilities over women's. The effects of group-level factors, such as interaction style, became apparent when tasks were classified in terms of the type of interaction required for completion. Female group members' interaction apparently facilitated performance at tasks requiring positive social activities, including friendliness and agreement with others. Men's interaction style slightly, although not reliably, facilitated performance on tasks requiring task-oriented behavior, such as giving opinions and suggestions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of protagonist's sex on assessing gender differences in moral reasoning.

355 high school and college students completed J. R. Rest's Defining Issues Test in either its traditional format (all male protagonists) or an experimental format (all female protagonists). Analysis showed expected and significant age and participants' sex effects, but no effects due to protagonist's sex (form). Findings contradict charges of a sex bias due to using only male protagonists in assessing moral reasoning. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)