Men, Women not from Mars, Venus
Men and women aren’t so different, after all.
They have similar levels of interest in sex with multiple partners, willingness to have sex outside of a relationship, closeness with a best friend and interest in science, for instance.
What a surprise!
Harry Reis, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, and Bobbi Carothers, a senior data analyst at Washington University used their own and others’ research to study the characteristics of 13,301 men and women.
They looked at a range of things like physical strength, sexual attitudes, empathy, science inclination, extroversion, relationship interdependence, intimacy, mate selection criteria and personality traits in an attempt to find out which characteristics could reliably predict whether someone was male or female.
Turns out, women and men are much more alike than different.
And even differences may not be biologically based. Stereotypes tend to create social patterns. Boys are told “boys don’t cry,” so they end up repressing their emotions. Or, they get kudos for acting tough. So they are more likely to grow up to be tough guys. Girls, on the other hand, are free to cry and show weakness, and so they are more likely to do both. That’s a social pattern, not a biological one.
But even with socialization, you still get a continuum of behavior. Some guys are sweet and some girls are tough.
The researchers found that the biggest differences were physical, with men being taller and physically stronger. But psychologically, there’s a lot of overlap.
Below, you can find graphs of physical strength and assertiveness. Men are a bit more assertive, but take a look at the overlap.
A variety of other traits show a pattern similar to the bottom graph, like desire for non-committed sex (so much for evolutionary psychology), fear of success, levels of empathy, and how much feeling men and women have for their friends.
Amanda Marcotte points out that,
What’s remarkable about all this is not that men and women have so much in common but that these commonalities persist despite relentless gender policing that usually involves quite a bit of shame.
Men face ridicule if they’re perceived as having female-like levels of empathy and concern for their friends, and yet, according to the study, they overcome it. Women are routinely told there’s something wrong with them if they have “masculine” attitudes towards sex and men are emasculated if they aren’t horny all the time or if they desire intimacy alongside their sexual adventures, and yet both genders tend to have a mix of adventurousness and tenderness when it comes to sex.
Good to know that the humanity within usually wins out.
Simplistic frameworks like the pop psychology book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus can even be harmful in some ways. In relationships, says Reis,
When something goes wrong between partners, people often blame the other partner’s gender immediately. Having gender stereotypes hinders people from looking at their partner as an individual. (Yet) gay and lesbian couples have much the same problems relating to each other that heterosexual couples do. Clearly, it’s not so much sex, but human character that causes difficulties.
Rigid frames can also discourage people from pursuing goals that they think are for the other sex.
If men aren’t really from Mars, nor women from Venus, that gives us all a whole lot of freedom.
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Posted on February 27, 2013, in feminism, gender, men, psychology, relationships, sex, women and tagged feminism, gender, men, psychology, relationships, sex, women. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
Interesting and informative post. I have a feeling I’ll use this a lot.
Yes. Some surprising stuff. Happy to share.
“Good to know that the humanity within usually wins out.” Wonderful
There’s an old saying, I can’t recall the exact words or where I read it, which goes something like “the best of men have embraced their inner women and the best of women have embraced their inner men”. It has a very Eastern zen-like quality of using the steoreotype’s strength against you: looking for all those masculine / feminine qualities inside, surprise, surprise, you find them
Great quote. Thanks!
It seems that people often try to find differences in gender, race, ethnicity, etc. just to have a reason to treat others differently. I think society would benefit from dropping the “us versus them” mentality that has been prevalent and instead focus on our similarities as humans. I believe we would find that, more often than not, we all have a lot in common with one another, regardless of the various superficial categories in which we place ourselves.That’s not to say that our differences should be ignored; rather, we should celebrate what makes us each unique as individuals instead of chastise people for not falling into preconceived notions of “right” and “wrong” according to socially prescribed roles.
I also appreciated your quote, “Good to know that the humanity within usually wins out.” Perfectly phrased!
Interesting post! Our culture assumes that men and women are inherently different and then use that assumption to justify different treatment (usually to the detriment of women).
I am happy to know that Harry Reis from University of Rochester, and Bobbi Carothers from Washington University did their study of characteristics of 13,301 men and women and found that men and women have things in common. For instance, sex desire, women want to be adventurous and men want to be tender, and vice versa.
I agree with Mister Reis, that “gender stereotypes hinders people from looking at their partner as an individual”. I think that in individuality gets lost behind the social standards, which influence on gender self-esteem, in both women and men lives.
Social frames definitely discourage people to grow, to pursue your own goals.
This is funny because I have noticed that if a girl acts a certain way out of “woman character” it immediately affects how my friends judge them. They mostly use descriptions like “crazy”. And they love to argue with me that women are more similar to us than naught. Thanks for the post.
This is personally very intriguing because I thought that men and women are inherently different in many ways. It shows that, although men and women are quite similar, they behave differently because they are considerably influenced socially to suppress themselves from behaving in ways that are against gender norms. If they were not socially pressured, would there be many more competitive women and emotional men? Would there be many more women in the audience at a UFC fight and men who wanted to be cheerleaders for football teams? I think that the answer is yes. I think that I would be able to cry more easily if, as I grew up, I were not continually influenced socially to think that I should not cry because it is not what a real man does. Why do I try to stop myself from crying hard when tears started to form? Why is it ridiculous for a man to cry? Gender norms are so messed up. I might be a totally different person if I were not socially influenced to adhere to gender norms.
On a different note, what did those poor commas ever do to you that you should treat them so unfairly? “Men, Women not from Mars, Venus” is not remotely acceptable English! Use conjunctions!.
Vivienne, (Hon. Fellow of the Royal College of Punctuation and Linguistic Pedantry).
Oh gosh, thanks for letting me know. I never would’ve realized if you hadn’t said something.
American headlines would drive you crazy. What some will do to get a title to fit on one line!!