For centuries there
has been a bias toward describing the sex differences between men and
women seen in social behavior as due to differences in the brain.
Early research on the brain, as the author points out in the first
section of the book, appeared to uphold this hypothesis. However,
careful analysis of the research findings suggests that many of the
studies were flawed, or biased toward generating the results they
produced. I found these first chapters fascinating. It’s a
cautionary tale that in order to understand the results we must look
at methods, and samples. Too often the news trumpets the results with
no understanding of how they were achieved.
The second half of
the book looks at more modern research utilizing functional MRI and
brain imaging techniques. The chapters on research on newborns are
fascinating. What they’re finding is that many of the myths about
babies and small children are not accurate. Boys are supposed to be
more interested in mechanical gadgets and girls in dolls. The more
researcher bias is removed from the experimental setup, the more this
difference washes out.
I agree with the
conclusion of the author that it would be a good idea to pay more
attention to individual differences. When large data sets are used
many interesting findings are washed out as outliers. I think this is
a very promising area of research.
I highly recommend
this book if you’re interested in sex differences. The question of
nature vs nurture is well explored and suggests that environment
plays a significant role in how boys and girls see each other and
themselves. This has implications for education and the socialization
of young and not so young children.
I received this book
from Pantheon for this review.
No comments:
Post a Comment