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Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by d_burfoot on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:22PM (#27055199)
My questions for people who don't believe in sex-based personality differences:

1. Do you believe that hormones like testosterone have large impacts on a person's behavior?

2. Do you believe that men have roughly 20x more testosterone in their blood serum than women?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Testosterone_levels_i...

Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by orwin on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:44PM (#27056208)
1. Yes, although "large" should be reformulated. It does have an impact on aggressiveness it seems.

2. Yes.

Doesn't change the fact that most comportments and interests are mainly ruled by social environment and upbringing, and biology only have this little impact (and it is still probably less that my brain will attribute, but at least i'm self-aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error).

Unless you think poor people are biologically less interested in space, earth crust, plants, sailing, horseriding, i'd be pretty confident in saying that most differences between children are in fact solely based on culture. This might evolve later (puberty hit!), but considering childhood is the crux of so much of your later choices

I've been a youth camp counselor, and in my country, classes are not always segregated when going to those camps (they are more and more tbh), and with this experience i can say: you tell me your child hobbies and dreams, i can tell you your income quintile (or social class rather, as cultural inheritance is not always correlated to income), whether it's a boy or girl, and if his family emigrated recently. Only work if you're from my country, but i'm sure if you talk to any youth camp counselor in your country who cared and worked this job for six+ years, he'd be able to do the same.

Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by blaser-waffle on Thursday May 06, 2021 @11:44AM (#27064979)
I love how this manages to touch on class, race, and a whole bunch of issues, while also managing to derail the conversation to some sort of camp kid discussion.

> Doesn't change the fact that most comportments and interests are mainly ruled by social environment and upbringing, and biology only have this little impact (and it is still probably less that my brain will attribute, but at least i'm self-aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error).

Twin studies disprove this. Separated twins, in different parts of the country, end up doing the same sort of jobs and marrying the same kind of people.

We're willing to assume different dog breeds -- all the same species -- have different temperaments, why wouldn't this apply to people. Even Dobermans can be trained to be nice dogs, but that means the training is overcoming the urge to bite.

Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by hnarn on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:58PM (#27055736)
How does accepting both of these somehow invalidate the belief that gendered behavior is mostly social or learned?
Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by cwbrandsma on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @07:06PM (#27057010)
For myself, because I have raised children of my own. I have 5 kids, 2 boys and 3 girls. At 2 years old, kids do not give a flying fuck about social norms. They just want to play. And from the earliest ages you see children playing differently based on gender. You give a small child the choice between a doll and a stick, you can guess which will be picked by gender and be right most of the time. Give your daughter a dump truck and she will turn it into a stroller. Give your son a doll and he will be wrestling with it.
Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by _nothing on Thursday May 06, 2021 @01:03AM (#27059335)
This may be your experience, however I have extreme doubt that these are anything but learned behaviors. There is nothing intrinsically masculine or feminine about sticks, dump trucks, strollers, or dolls. They are just objects, and for the majority of human existence the latter three didn't even exist in their current form.

All knowledge of these objects, what they're used for, and who uses them were learned from societal influences. A kid doesn't have to care about social norms to tell that most people they see playing with sticks or driving dump trucks are men, and most people they see pushing strollers and playing with dolls are women. It's like that from out in the park to within picture books.

Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by nec4b on Thursday May 06, 2021 @02:38AM (#27059874)
What is your experience or could you link to a study that confirms your point of view?
Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by bluetonium on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:26PM (#27056032)
I think the person you're responding to said "for people who don't believe in sex-based personality differences"

Asserting that there are sex-based personality differences is not incompatible with gendered behavior being mostly social or learned.

Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by InitialLastName on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:08PM (#27055865)
Or the idea that we shouldn't be using population-level trend data to implement statistical discrimination on the individual level.
Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by kingsuper20 on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:30PM (#27056064)
My take is that it takes social and learned behavior to overcome gender differences. They tamp down, not amplify.
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Re:Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019) by dang on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @04:37PM (#27055430)
Please don't take HN threads in a flamewar direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html