Brain differences are nowhere near the entire story. There are so many different chemicals that can be floating around in your brain at any given time. Oxytocin might give you some insight here. They’ve done studies that showed that this hormone increases things like trust, trustworthiness, generosity, empathy and morality.
This same video explains that testosterone increases selfishness and punishing behaviors. Different sources say different things about how oxytocin affects each gender, but there’s a theme where they’re saying the women either have higher oxytocin or stronger reactions to it or that testosterone interferes with it, etc. Essentially the message in the theories is “Women more frequently act on the influence of oxytocin”.
Here is what this is like for me:
Imagine, for a moment, feeling ten times less selfish (the video says men have 10x the testosterone, not sure if our subjective experiences correspond exactly, but that’s my guess for the following hypothetical scenarios). Now imagine being high every time you do something nice. For me, this means the world feels beautiful, I feel secure and peaceful, and I feel satisfied in a way that nothing else can match.
Imagine someone doing something bad to you. Imagine you’re not even selfish enough to be angry. I don’t always stay calm, but the things that don’t make me angry might surprise you. Now imagine feeling sorry for the person instead of worrying about yourself. This is what it feels like to be me. People like me have to work hard on developing rational self-interest. You’ve probably wondered about the phenomenon where a lot of women get attached to an abusive man and keep trying to love him into being a better person even though he’s abusing her. I haven’t had problems saying no since my early twenties, but it took work to learn to be strong enough to say no and be firm. These hormonal differences may explain that.
If you’re motivated by helping, and you even feel sorry for people who hurt you, how much motivation do you have to go out and learn more about how to make money? If your brain rewards you with a high whenever you’re nice to someone, how much more time would you want to spend doing that? If what gratifies you is expressing empathy, this changes your priorities by, at the very least, competing with your other interests. In my case, I prefer playing helping roles so much that it trumps just about everything else for me. Here is a chart that shows the results of some studies done to compare the interests of highly intelligent adult men and women (I figure if the LW surveys are right about member’s IQs being in the 140s on average, this chart is more applicable here than a random one).
Notice things like the women are much more interested in community service, social contacts and teaching children (all of which require caring) and men are more interested in law (which demands an aggressive personality because you’re fighting over who wins). Sure, you can help people with money, but that way, you give them the most benefit while spending the least amount of time actually interacting with them. Most people have empathy and like helping but not everyone can do it full-time. I, on the other hand, like helping so much I can’t be bothered to spend a large amount of time on money. After I clock out at the end of the day, it’s time for me to help someone.
If oxytocin tends to affect the genders differently (or if testosterone contradicts it), this explains a lot of gender differences—why men tend to be more aggressive, why women tend to be more socially accommodating and it may explain why they aren’t as interested in economics—they may just prefer roles that require caring instead.
In the brain females have more nerves (white matter), and males have more glia (grey matter); this doesn’t mean much, though. Glia react to neurotransmitters, which means they may have processing capabilities as yet unknown; considering this and humans’ neuroplasticity, nothing can be reasonably inferred from this distinction.
That’s the only physiological difference of the cortex between sexes, as far as I’m aware.
If you are correct, then brain physiology doesn’t explain the difference. So then, what does?
I ask the question because I have a suspicion that whatever causes women to think less like economists than men also makes them less likely to join communities like Less Wrong. I, myself, do not have a good answer to this question. Furthermore, I suspect that until we do have a good answer to this question, our strategies for increasing the proportion of females on Less Wrong will be ineffective.
The only macroscopic physiological difference (as far as you’re aware). This is not very informative; we wouldn’t expect to know about the vast majority of possible differences.
… we wouldn’t expect to know about the vast majority of possible differences.
This assumes there are any innate differences; the only other difference I neglected to mention is hormone balances. Hormones, like neurotransmitters, can affect the way humans think—besides the reproductively relevant hormones, I am not familiar with any specific differences in hormone balances between sexes (as I haven’t yet studied hormones in detail).
Brain plasticity is such that experience, particularly experience during rapid brain development (birth to ~12), can effect physiological changes in the brain.
The surveys the paper you linked analyse were of men and women with varying levels of education in a Western society (America). They found that the gap widens with higher reported levels of education. The economists at GMU who wrote the paper suggest that men learn more about economics per year of education, as they have more interest in it than women.
The question the economists investigated was not “Why is it that in populations of females and males with equal levels of education in economics, females still know less than men?” Indeed, their not even subtly suggesting that is an issue among economists implies there is no economics knowledge gap between male and female economists.
The GMU economists attempted to analyse existing, previously gathered survey data from 1996.
Speculation: This data may no longer be representative of the survey population.
The question the GMU economists did analyse was: “Why is it that, in our general Western populace (of America), females do not share the same opinions as economists about the issues on which they were surveyed in 1996, to a greater degree than the males of that same survey do not share the same opinions as economists about the issues on which they were surveyed in 1996?”
Speculation: Whatever differences of interest that spurred men in 1996 to learn more about economics than females in 1996 existed, the differences were caused by cultural influences rather than innate physiological discrepancies between the sexes. Cultural differences between the sexes could potentially affect females’ and males’ cortical physiology to the degree that economics would appear more interesting to broad spectrum males than females. I think it much more likely that the Western culture in question (America) was in 1996 and earlier more accepting of male interest in economics than female interest, if only because it is a simpler explanation.
Regardless, the data is quite old when one considers the Western cultural changes brought about by the internet and various other technologies in the past sixteen years. I think we should wait for more data before overanalysing a survey from 1996.
If men think more like economists than women, then what explains this difference?
Brain differences are nowhere near the entire story. There are so many different chemicals that can be floating around in your brain at any given time. Oxytocin might give you some insight here. They’ve done studies that showed that this hormone increases things like trust, trustworthiness, generosity, empathy and morality.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html
This same video explains that testosterone increases selfishness and punishing behaviors. Different sources say different things about how oxytocin affects each gender, but there’s a theme where they’re saying the women either have higher oxytocin or stronger reactions to it or that testosterone interferes with it, etc. Essentially the message in the theories is “Women more frequently act on the influence of oxytocin”.
Here is what this is like for me:
Imagine, for a moment, feeling ten times less selfish (the video says men have 10x the testosterone, not sure if our subjective experiences correspond exactly, but that’s my guess for the following hypothetical scenarios). Now imagine being high every time you do something nice. For me, this means the world feels beautiful, I feel secure and peaceful, and I feel satisfied in a way that nothing else can match.
Imagine someone doing something bad to you. Imagine you’re not even selfish enough to be angry. I don’t always stay calm, but the things that don’t make me angry might surprise you. Now imagine feeling sorry for the person instead of worrying about yourself. This is what it feels like to be me. People like me have to work hard on developing rational self-interest. You’ve probably wondered about the phenomenon where a lot of women get attached to an abusive man and keep trying to love him into being a better person even though he’s abusing her. I haven’t had problems saying no since my early twenties, but it took work to learn to be strong enough to say no and be firm. These hormonal differences may explain that.
If you’re motivated by helping, and you even feel sorry for people who hurt you, how much motivation do you have to go out and learn more about how to make money? If your brain rewards you with a high whenever you’re nice to someone, how much more time would you want to spend doing that? If what gratifies you is expressing empathy, this changes your priorities by, at the very least, competing with your other interests. In my case, I prefer playing helping roles so much that it trumps just about everything else for me. Here is a chart that shows the results of some studies done to compare the interests of highly intelligent adult men and women (I figure if the LW surveys are right about member’s IQs being in the 140s on average, this chart is more applicable here than a random one).
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10176.aspx
Notice things like the women are much more interested in community service, social contacts and teaching children (all of which require caring) and men are more interested in law (which demands an aggressive personality because you’re fighting over who wins). Sure, you can help people with money, but that way, you give them the most benefit while spending the least amount of time actually interacting with them. Most people have empathy and like helping but not everyone can do it full-time. I, on the other hand, like helping so much I can’t be bothered to spend a large amount of time on money. After I clock out at the end of the day, it’s time for me to help someone.
If oxytocin tends to affect the genders differently (or if testosterone contradicts it), this explains a lot of gender differences—why men tend to be more aggressive, why women tend to be more socially accommodating and it may explain why they aren’t as interested in economics—they may just prefer roles that require caring instead.
In the brain females have more nerves (white matter), and males have more glia (grey matter); this doesn’t mean much, though. Glia react to neurotransmitters, which means they may have processing capabilities as yet unknown; considering this and humans’ neuroplasticity, nothing can be reasonably inferred from this distinction.
That’s the only physiological difference of the cortex between sexes, as far as I’m aware.
If you are correct, then brain physiology doesn’t explain the difference. So then, what does?
I ask the question because I have a suspicion that whatever causes women to think less like economists than men also makes them less likely to join communities like Less Wrong. I, myself, do not have a good answer to this question. Furthermore, I suspect that until we do have a good answer to this question, our strategies for increasing the proportion of females on Less Wrong will be ineffective.
Please conduct yourself to this comment, as I think it will serve as a response yours as well.
The only macroscopic physiological difference (as far as you’re aware). This is not very informative; we wouldn’t expect to know about the vast majority of possible differences.
This assumes there are any innate differences; the only other difference I neglected to mention is hormone balances. Hormones, like neurotransmitters, can affect the way humans think—besides the reproductively relevant hormones, I am not familiar with any specific differences in hormone balances between sexes (as I haven’t yet studied hormones in detail).
Brain plasticity is such that experience, particularly experience during rapid brain development (birth to ~12), can effect physiological changes in the brain.
The surveys the paper you linked analyse were of men and women with varying levels of education in a Western society (America). They found that the gap widens with higher reported levels of education. The economists at GMU who wrote the paper suggest that men learn more about economics per year of education, as they have more interest in it than women.
The question the economists investigated was not “Why is it that in populations of females and males with equal levels of education in economics, females still know less than men?” Indeed, their not even subtly suggesting that is an issue among economists implies there is no economics knowledge gap between male and female economists.
The GMU economists attempted to analyse existing, previously gathered survey data from 1996.
Speculation: This data may no longer be representative of the survey population.
The question the GMU economists did analyse was: “Why is it that, in our general Western populace (of America), females do not share the same opinions as economists about the issues on which they were surveyed in 1996, to a greater degree than the males of that same survey do not share the same opinions as economists about the issues on which they were surveyed in 1996?”
Speculation: Whatever differences of interest that spurred men in 1996 to learn more about economics than females in 1996 existed, the differences were caused by cultural influences rather than innate physiological discrepancies between the sexes. Cultural differences between the sexes could potentially affect females’ and males’ cortical physiology to the degree that economics would appear more interesting to broad spectrum males than females. I think it much more likely that the Western culture in question (America) was in 1996 and earlier more accepting of male interest in economics than female interest, if only because it is a simpler explanation.
Regardless, the data is quite old when one considers the Western cultural changes brought about by the internet and various other technologies in the past sixteen years. I think we should wait for more data before overanalysing a survey from 1996.
They did say “as far as I’m aware.”