SEX DIFFERENCES – PSIHOLOGY 4 | Healthpharmablog. About Health & Medicine

SEX DIFFERENCES – PSIHOLOGY 4

Posted on March 11th, 2009, by admin

In several experiments, males and females aged from 18 to 22 were asked to help teach something to a ‘target person’. If the ‘target person’ gave the wrong response, the ‘teacher’ gave him or her an electric shock, and could choose how strong a shock he gave and for how long, by turning a dial and holding the shock-button down. The ‘teacher’ did not know that the ‘target person’ was a confederate of the experimenter and did not receive a shock in reality! In every experiment, males were more likely than females to give a stronger shock for longer. If the ‘target person’ was a male and appeared physically disabled or reacted more, the males delivered more intense shocks, the females gave less intense shocks. But if the ‘target person’ was a female, ‘teachers’ of both sexes gave less intense, and shorter, shocks.

There seems no doubt that boys and men are more aggressive than girls and women. Women learn about aggression but do not act on their knowledge. This is not due to timidity, or to fear of being punished, because boys receive more punishment for aggression than girls. The aggressive behaviour may be due to the way boys are brought up, or it may be due to the effects of pre-natal testosterone conditioning, or both mechanisms may be involved. Another factor may also be important. Small boys may be aggressive to other small boys for the ‘pleasure’ they get from hurting others, or it may be for a desire to achieve dominance in the group. In monkeys, dominance seems to be the main reason for aggression, and it is possible that this is the reason for aggressiveness in small boys. When the victim can only escape by becoming a solitary or by seeking the company of girls (which is ‘unboyish’), he has to accept the aggression. But among bigger boys, aggression is less useful to obtain dominance, as bigger boys are more easily able to escape or to retaliate, and a leader has to use other methods to maintain his position in the group.

Among male adults, direct aggression is only used as a means of dominance in a few sub-cultures, and leadership is obtained and maintained by indirect methods of aggression or because the leader has a higher status or is more expert on the subject.

We do not know why males are more aggressive. We can speculate that male aggressiveness is probably due to learned behaviour which is more acceptable to the brain cells and circuits that have been flavoured by pre-natal testosterone.

Parents behave differently towards their infant sons and daughters, and this begins almost as soon as the child is born.

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