This semester I am teaching Psychology of Women at the University of Bridgeport. This is the second time I have taught this course. It is a fun course to teach because everyone likes it. This week we took up the issue of whether overall women’s personalities are different from men’s. A significant percentage of the class believes that men and women are very different in many domains and that this difference is biologic or genetic. The author of our textbook is a feminist from New York so she tends to down play any gender differences found, and she attributes nearly all gender differences to culture.
To balance the views of the textbook, I look for other articles to share with the class. This week I found a great paper, and coincidentally some interesting statistics were also reported in the news. The paper I found is entitled Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Differences in Big Five Personality Traits Across 55 Cultures. It was just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The results are shocking and a wake up call.
The authors found that there are significant sex differences in personality in the areas of neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion. This means that around the world, women are more anxious/fearful, more agreeable, more conscientious and possess more positive sociability traits than do men. Of course all the sexist people in my class attribute this to an inherent biological difference between the sexes. They also expect me to agree with the biological view. After all I spent five years in a lab at Yale studying the effects of sex steroids on the brain.
In spite of my background I do not accept that these gender differences in personality result from a preprogrammed unfolding of the genetic plan. I believe they are largely culturally determined. My position is supported by the study I am sharing with you. It turns out that gender differences in personality are the LARGEST in Western countries where women have the most opportunity and the greatest equality. Furthermore, gender differences in personality around the world are due to differences in men, not differences in women.
Yes, that means that America and Europe lead the world in producing men who are fearless, disagreeable, lacking in conscientiousness and positive sociality. This is very important to us because these are the very personality traits that are associated with sociopathy (See Are they just evil people?).
The study found that communal, trusting cultures produce men who are more androgynous in their personalities. The men from communal cultures are more fearful, more conscientious, and more prosocial. Fearlessness, is perhaps the most important temperamental trait leading to the development of sociopathy. Furthermore, smoking among women around the world is associated with the largest sex differences in personality. This is interesting because maternal smoking has been linked to sociopathy in offspring (see Maternal smoking linked to sociopathy in Offspring).
So how do we put this all together? I think maleness and the hormone testosterone make boys more sensitive to early environmental experiences. If boys are raised in a loving environment, where social bonds and self-sacrifice for the family are strongly encouraged, then they will grow up more loving and prosocial. If boys are raised to be independent and look out for number one, they are more likely than girls to develop antisocial attitudes. Add to that, the effect environmental toxins have on impulse control and you have an explanation for the high prevalence of sociopathy in our society.
That brings me to the news this week. According to the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project , 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails at the beginning of 2008. This means that 1 in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars. Since 80 percent of those in prison are sociopaths, nearly 3 percent of the young adult male population is a jailed sociopath. In spite of this the crime rate remains stable due to the many who are not in jail. To read more see MSNBC.com. What percentage of the total young adult male sociopaths are in prison anyway? If you guess 30 percent, that means a sizable percentage of young adult males are sociopathic. We just don’t know.
These statistics are a wake-up call for us all. The practices and beliefs of our society are leading to more sociopaths being formed than would otherwise be formed. We need to rethink our values and our child rearing practices. We need to say strongly that it is very important for boys to grow up possessing the capacity for guilt and empathy. We need to stop believing that dominance and competitiveness are the most important personal qualities to possess. We need to stop conditioning boys to be callous by bombarding them with violent entertainment.
Furthermore, we need to provide our children with a safe clean environment. That starts by eliminating smoking in women of child bearing age and telling teen aged girls they have a responsibility not to start smoking. If teen aged girls start smoking, it is unlikely they will quit in time to prevent exposure of the unborn. In some segments of our society, up to 30 per cent of pregnant women smoke.
Women can sit around complaining that there are not enough “good men” to go around. Or, they can do something about these issues so that future generations will not face these largely preventable social problems.
Liane – You raise some very interesting questions.
Just one of them is if men became more like women would women still be attracted to them and vice versa? It does seem as though some difference is necessary to generate (heterosexual) heat – and thereby hangs a heck of a tail!
Thanks for the interesting post.
(P.S. I’ve sent you an email about another matter.)
I ran across this article purely by accident while doing mathematics on the male to rape ratio (which is incidentally would be 1000:1 if you did not take into account serial rapists and repeated reports of rape by a single individual). Upon reading your entry and the accompanying responses I would immediately assume that this is a feminist blog, since the responses are primarily female and the discussion centers on men in most of your articles.
I however wanted to point out some issues that I had with the suppositions in this entry and I will be posting another for the following entry, on said entry. I say supposition, because it seems that it has been decidedly shown by you and your viewers that it is men which need to change. It would also seem that the majority of your readers believe that it is men that are the variable which raise the population of sociopathy in our society. Lastly, I believe that you have misstated a important fact in your entry.
I would like to note and hopefully draw your attention to the following attributes of American society. It has been overwhelmingly seen in the last 5 years that there has been a rise in the amount of women who have been convicted of murder, imprisoned for pedophilia, dismissed for abuse of power and misuse of company assets and allocations and lastly who have began to acquire the levels of stress and heart disease, which were priorly held by white collar male employees. The statistics have become so prevalent of female abuse of the family court system that it has lead to a closer look at the actions of the proceedings and reformation of decisions by the bench judges. I point this out, not to display a disparagement upon women, but to show that it is women themselves who have begun to adopt many of the same aspects of actions and reactions which you have denoted as being male related.
I noticed that the descriptive nature of a sociopath that you have defined meets the criteria often associated with a person of lower economic means. Yet, I propose that it it has been proven that APD, sociopathy as defined in the DSM IV-TR, defines sociopaths in a more stringent manner and the act of lumping sociopaths with psychopaths is a dividing ideology amongst most professionals in the Psychological field. However, despite this divide, there have been numerous studies which have denoted that economics is in no way a determining factor when concerning sociopathy, it quite easily crosses those barriers.
My final point of contention is with your statistics concerning the present prison population in America. Your overall numbers may be correct, yet I debate that you may not define the persons who have entered into the system as sociapaths. It has been shown that the numbers are alarming as to the percentage of prisoners that show sociopathy once inducted into the system. I do not think that you take into account that the majority of those placed into this system, which in my own opinion shapes individuals to be anti-social, were convicted of non-violent crimes relating to drug related offenses. Sociologist almost hands down agree that the drug phenomena in America is an economic problem which has been continually aided by the government and ignored by the rich and middle class.
Though I do agree with you on consistent ideology that most, non-biological, mental and emotional disorders are sociological in nature, I would suggest restraint in the fervor that you suggest. The social engineering of docility into men sounds more like something from the book ‘1984’ than a professional concept for an educated person. The feminist movement created a conceptual void for men that very closely resembled that which women have and still do face. Men were expected to be more feminine in nature, in touch with their emotions and those of others, while retaining masculine traits. The displaying of to much femininity guarantees ridicule by peers and reduced ability to attain proper relationships with a female, due to their own ideologies of wanting the ‘Adonis’ man. Yet the reverse, is rewarded by peer acceptance and feminine attention. So I ask, how is your concepts any different from those stated by feminist from decades past and what responsibility do you hold for making those statements without first considering the path that would elicit them and the ramifications of the actions which you propose? It is easy to make presumptions on the need for others without considering the process and effects that can occur do to these movements.
To Concerned Viewer,
You are a beautifully open minded person, and I think every blogger here commends you in your pursuit of higher education. Doing an analysis of rapists in America would have you land on this site for its subject matter.
I read your other post, and I agreed some with your perspective. It IS fair to get to know someone before judging them.
But this site, and its bloggers, are here for a support that is hard to get from people whom have not been victimized by a man, or a woman, who turn out to show all (or a high majority) of the signs of anti-social personality disorder. It is NOT a man bashing site. It is a site of commiseration, understanding and healing, from men and woman who said they loved us one minute, and called us fat ugly stupid and worthless literally the next minute. Had no empathy for our pain and our struggles, particularly the pain that they themselves inflicted.
I assume that you began reading and said to yourself “This is a man haters blog…” It really isn’t. We are not physical rape victims, we are emotional rape victims. When you have more time, please start from the home page, and see what drove the sites creator (Donna) to start the page and the blog. Read the articles and the blogs from the beginning, if you can stand to hear about our assorted misjudgments, for which we all freely admit, in retrospect were just foolish. We trusted and we loved, and our trust and love was used against us…we are not talking about society. We are talking about our problems and issues with particular individuals. You sound very bright, and are going for a degree in ??? (psychology?) My wish for you, is that you never need this site for more than research.
Take care and enjoy your time in college, may you always look back on it fondly and with great appreciation.
I have a website for you for generalizations of sociopathy and signs http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mcafee/Bin/sb.html
RW
Concerned viewer,
Righteous Woman is correct in her description of this site.
I am also aware of the rise in incarceration of women for violent and criminal behavior. My “guess” is that it is both a case of a bigger percentage of women who do those things being prosecuted, and an actual rise in the number of crimes of this sort being committed by women.( vs. Men)
Your assessment of the “drug problem’ i think is a bit sophmoric –I remember a sociology class I had as an undergraduate where the prof told us that if “two teenagers shoplifted and one was caught and “labeled” and the other one got away with it without any sanctions, the one who was “labeled” a shoplifter would go on to be come a career criminal and the one who had not been labeled by society would become a good upstanding citizen and stop his stealing.”
Calling a duck a duck is not what makes it a duck. If you call something that looks like a duck, acts like a duck, swims like a duck, lays eggs like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and most of the time you are right–it is a DUCK.
Most of the people here have had their lives devestated by psychopaths/sociopaths/Anti-social personality disordered people.
We are here to learn about “how to spot them” in the future and also how to heal from the devestation that having been involved with them in an intimate way has caused in our lives, our spiritual and emotional and mental distress.
Yes, we are “down on” people who behave in a narcissistic and pathological way toward others, as individuals, as groups, as dictators, and as societies. But most of it is as individuals because we have been INDIVIDUALLY devestated by their behaviors.
We are also aware that there is NO CURE for these people.
As Righteous woman said, good luck with your degree.
Concerned Viewer,
Your comments are completely misplaced and while they sound oh-so-academic, they are not a fit here.
Did I get you right at the end there? That it is the feminist movement that has caused personality disorders in men such as Sociopathy? Back to the books my friend!
Please read if you desire to understand what this Blog is about. Wait awhile before you try to interject your studies and misdirections.
Righteous Woman & Oxdover, you are so gracious to this person. I applaud you. I am however, totally annoyed.
This is absolutely NOT a blog of man haters. There are several men that visit this site and offer their comments, insights and find healing here. This is a site for victims of Sociopaths. Men have been victims of Sociopaths as well. And please, don’t give us a lecture on being victims either.
Bad things to happen to well meaning people. People do get exploited. Sometimes it is obvious; sometimes it is not.
Also, there is no economic criteria to Sociopaths and though we often talk about being taken financially by Sociopaths, the behavior this is indicating is actually, EXPLOITATION.
Your counsel is exactly the kind of thing that people (men or women) do not need to hear when they are trying to recover from what we call a “Sociopathic Encounter.” It’s not pretty. Count yourself lucky if you don’t understand it.
Aloha – LOL….”If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?” Insight is insight..”opinions are like roses..” And a favorite from Maya Angelou “When you know better, you do better”.
I honestly don’t think that CV knew better.
And Aloha..You made me laugh with you….
Concerned viewer will probably never look at this again…there is no long term interest here for them….But thank you for the compliment.
I had a little snigger too, especially at Oxdrovers duck description. I was going to place a short blog that said ‘Quack Quack’, but I thought that would be far too flippant and disrespectful for the serious contributors here. Aloha – you are so polite!
Ditto, Aloha, thanks for the compliment–
I don’t think CV “got it either” but have been young and ignorant myself once, now I am just old and realizing that I know less, MUCH LESS than I THOUGHT I did at 19. LOL
Learning about life is like trying to get a drink of water from a FIRE HOSE, no matter how thirsty you are, or how hard you swallow, MOST OF IT GETS BY YOU!
If I ever get back to where I think I “know everything” again, my kids said they would put me in a nursing home for the demented. LOL
To avoid any misunderstanding, my last blog was in response to that of CV – but I think many of you guessed that!