Do you think men and women have different personalities?

Ah yes, I saw that study…as usual, I’ll say there are differences but the why for these differences have to do with socialization, mostly.

People have different personalities.

With the huge difference in hormones, it is inevitable.

@ragingloli I have first-hand experience of “switching hormones” and I have to say, it hasn’t changed my personality at all.

Did we really need a study to tell us this?

Riding in a police car for the first two years, proved this to me.

This is the reason they make chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream.

All of us are different in many different ways.

I think they are being to general. So many things go into making us who we are. Hormones, upbringing, society, and cultural differences and economics and age differences. I bet if they did a test in different countries of people in different social standings and education they would find a larger gap and difference between the same sexes.
Health even has a lot to do with our personalities. I think its was just a waste of money in an attempt to understand the opposite sex. Women and men don’t even understand their own sex half the time.
Way too many variables. I think DNA is easier to understand and at least won’t be a waste of money. Find out what makes us physically tick before moving to the ever changing mind.

Most of this stuff can be attributed to how we’re raised. The same typical personalities can be found in American culture like recycled paper. We’re all essentially raised the same, but I do think men and women have some biological differences that just make us different. Not in a bad way, though of course.

Good heavens, yes. This is not news to us.

Yep, there is no NEW news under the sun. lol
Aside from individual “personality” ALL animals have male/female differences.
My female cat is sweet, prissy, coy, and BITCHY! The male is laid back, reserved, easily amused. haha
There is plenty of truth to biological as well as socializing factors.
As always, there are many truths and often it’s a multiple choice combo plate.

While there are exceptions of course, a difference I have noticed in relationships is that men feel loved when they feel respected and women feel loved when they feel cherished.

I’m with @downtide. People have different personalities. Being male or female is one factor that may determine personality, but there are so many other influences, each on a sliding scale, that I’m suspicious of the validity of such a study.

What a waste of money. Did this study come from the University of No Shit?

Interesting to me that the answers so far are tending toward believing that sex differences are so large and obvious that the study didn’t even need to be performed. The predominant view in psychology, at least up until recently, has been that sex differences are so small as to be irrelevant. From the Huffington Post article:

The consensus view . . . demonstrated through a meta-analysis of 46 other studies that men and women were actually very similar, not only in personality traits, but in other realms of supposed gender difference, like self-esteem, leadership, and math ability.

I find it odd that people think this was a waste of a study. It’s one thing to say “men and women are different,” it’s another to quantify in what ways they are different and back it up with more than anecdotal evidence (which is extremely weak from a rational standpoint). This is especially true in the wake of so many people who try to insist that men and women are more or less the same.

When we understand how and to what extent men and women are different, we can then start investigating different arguments regarding why those arguments exist. Given that the debate over how much is nature and how much is nurture is still ongoing, every bit of information here is useful.

@CunningLinguist I agree. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss something simply because many may feel they know enough about it.

Is this a serious question?

University of No Shit. lol @tinyfaery.

It is difficult to say because I’m not sure of the process that was used to determine the relation between gender and each of those 15 personality traits mentioned on that report (unless I missed something). The bigger question to me is still why? When children of each gender are brought up to be a certain way I’m sure that gender role socialization can be a bigger factor than the researchers in that study might admit. I’m sure there are some personality traits that may indeed be connected to each gender like the research describes but my question is just how big are these differences without the social gender constructs?

Not personalities so much as wiring, different “natures” – we were made male and female so that we could come together and be “one” – the dream of God has always been this oneness that comes from separated physiologies, psyches coming together to form that harmony on earth that we will truly understand in the next dimension when the earth journey is completed. Of course it gets harder every decade as we mutate off into more fragmentation but the dream is just as achievable as it has ever been if people are emotionally and mentally well and willing. It is the effort and the vision that are every bit as important as the fulfillment.

I groom dogs. There are a lot of biters so we kept tabs on whether there were more nasty males or females. I would have guessed males because of the testosterone but in our little study, it about equaled out. There are biters from both sexes. And it made no difference whether they were desexed or not.

I am completely with @Simone_De_Beauvoir on this one, how the hell can you tell because children are raised according to their external plumbing from the second they are conceived, that is why we have pink and blue everythings!

Okay now onto the Asians vs non-Asian people study! Just how different are their personalities???...

@rooeytoo, I wonder if the sex of the groomer has anything to do with how the dogs behave? Also, I wonder if the groomer’s personality has anything to do with how the dog behaves?

Generally, yes. There’s got to be a reason I’ve been told so often that I’m not like most women (by women and men). Like others, I’m more interested in the ‘why’ of it all, though.

Would those of you who mention socialization/nurture/culture as a factor care to expand? Does that mean that you think the differences observed aren’t important? What would be different for you if it could be proven that these differences were caused by socialization, as opposed to biology?

I will be honest, I have a hard time with the “socialization” argument, because it seems to me that social behavior is really an abstract extension of biology. But I don’t understand what changes, really, if we try to pin effects on one or the other.

If we were certain that “nurture” had a large influence on the apparent differences in men and women, it would make a difference to future generations. People would (hopefully) stop raising their girls and boys in different ways, you know? Over time, fewer parents would raise their girls to be ‘princesses’ and their boys to be ‘kings’ or ‘soldiers’. Then, people would just be… people.

@bkcunningham – we have male and female groomers of varying skill levels. I think the behavior of the animals depends more on the handling ability of the dog rather than their gender. There are so many factors that determine a dog’s behavior, but I don’t think they are influenced by gender based media and culture (be it relevant or not).

@nikipedia – how could you ever divorce socialization/nurture/culture from an individual? We are bombarded with these messages of how we are expected to behave, based on gender constantly. Greatest racehorse in the world right now is Black Caviar, a filly. I asked a question as to why a female human could not be the best and answers all came back giving me all sorts of reasons why not. We are not to tell a child they are dumb but it is okay to tell a female you can never be…..........whatever, because you are a female. That is why I tire of these studies that insist on defining roles, they limit the possibilities. I find it sad that young girls get these messages and stop dreaming before they even try. I guess young boys get the same messages. But again society deems most females roles less important so most don’t care if boys are excluded from these pursuits based on their gender.

ooops too late to edit, what I meant to say was the behavior of the animal depends upon the handling ability of the groomer rather than the gender of the dog.

A response.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – excellent article! I get a kick out of a line in the last paragraph, “No matter how much some want it to be true, it is just not that simple; there are no clear cut and easy answers to why we do what we do, and why men and women sometimes have problems getting along.” I don’t know any adults (or probably children as well) of the same gender who don’t have some problems getting along.

Thanks for sharing.

@rooeytoo While I agree that @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s article is interesting, it seems a bit too quick to me. That there are no clear cut answers does not mean that there are not answers—or at least useful information—to be gotten out of this research. That “male” and “female” may be categories with blurred edges and not fully exhaustive of human gender experience does not mean there is nothing to be learned about “males” and “females.”

Many here believe we evolved from apes. If you believe in that theory then why is it difficult to believe that evolution also is the cause of these “differences.” Only in this case I feel the evolutionary process is more based on culture, male domination, etc. etc. etc..

There can be no true study done on the inherent “differences” until you can raise males and females in such a way that the culture does not imprint the differences on them.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, I’m wondering if the author of your link even read the article or if he just read blog articles about it. The last sentence states, “To ignore the enormous wealth of data on how men and women are similar AND different and to try to tackle this enormously complex reality via one-dimensional approaches is just poor science.”

What was remarkable about the article in question was that they used a multivariate effect size called the Mahanalobis D to consider personality in fifteen dimensions simultaneously. Their exact argument is that considering multiple dimensions at once provides a more meaningful analysis, and when you include all of these dimensions you get much larger differences than one-dimensional analyses have provided.

On top of which, the “quotes” he quotes do not appear in the article, just in commentary about it.