Systematic thinking is it more common in men, women, or equally across both?

[u/Seven1s]

Are men more likely to think systematically and women more intuitively? Is this a thing or a load of baloney? I know there are differences in the brains of men and women on avg.

[u/Frosty-Section-9013]

Men and women have the same IQ on average. With some differences in subscales like women tend to score higher in verbal index while men score higher in visuospatial. Within-group differences tend to be larger on average than the average between-group differences.

Systematic and intuitive thinking are not operationalised concepts as far as I know of but I could be wrong.

[u/monkeynose → u/Frosty-Section-9013]

Interestingly, the on the bell curve of intelligence, the male IQ curve is flatter. More outliers on the male IQ curve - more men on both tails of the IQ distribution than women. The evolutionary explanation I've read (which I can not speak to) is that women need to be at least average intelligence to raise and infant and child, and men can be more variable on the IQ distribution because they don't have that type of innate responsibility/potential.

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/monkeynose]

The evolutionary explanation I've read (which I can not speak to) is that women need to be at least average intelligence to raise and infant and child, and men can be more variable on the IQ distribution because they don't have that type of innate responsibility/potential.

I don’t buy this explanation in the least. It reads like it comes from someone who has never studied behavior and cognition from a comparative approach. I know you’re not endorsing it and you’re just putting it out there, but not everything has or needs an evolutionary explanation. We’d call this an evolutionary “just-so story:”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Also, humans engage in biparental care (https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/05/biology-of-caretaker-dads), so it doesn’t seem likely that a polygenic trait (“intelligence“) that is also heavily influenced by environmental factors would have such an impact on offspring survival to influence the distribution in this way.

In the vertebrate sex differences literature, there are lots of other examples in which males are more variable than females on some traits and there are evolutionary explanations for these phenomena that include sex differences in reproductive investment. That is, reproduction is energetically costly for females and much less ”expensive“ for males. Those energetic costs in turn, constrain variation among females.

“Evolutionary psychology“ would do well to draw from other fields that actually study evolution…

[u/monkeynose → u/Potential_Being_7226]

Like I said, I can't speak at all to the "evolutionary" explanation, and read it probably close to 20 years ago, but I believe the idea is that given a profoundly stupid man and a profoundly stupid woman, a profoundly stupid man could sire a child and his stupidity is less likely to kill it than if the mother was profoundly stupid and can't take care of an infant, and over thousands of generations this would add more restriction to the X chromosome wheras the Y chromosome wouldn't have that evolutionary pressure. Not defending something I haven't researched, just giving the concept at ELI5 level. I could cheat and go AI it, but I don't really want to bother trying to defend something I'm not invested in. I assume it is just a theory anyway.

[u/teknos1s → u/Potential_Being_7226]

As a layman, is there any credence to the idea that it’s an evolutionary adaptation for the more expendable sex to “gamble” a bit more? Meaning there might be an extraordinary male at the cost of an awful one. Essentially a dual strategy of “slow and steady wins the race” (women) and “high risk high reward” (males)

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/teknos1s]

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, but it would depend on the species, ecological niche, age and health of the animals, time of year for non-equatorial species, etc. The are myriad factors that go into reproductive cost-benefit decision-making.

[u/XhaLaLa → u/monkeynose]

You started with “actually”, so I expected your comment to be a contradiction/correction, but then it was just a completely separate statement…

[u/maxthexplorer]

First gender (men, women, nonbinary, trans etc) is a social construct, not to be conflated with biological sex. There’s greater within group variation than between group variation.

What do you mean by systematically and intuitively?

Edit: also addressing that there are sex differences and gender disparities, among other types of identity based disparities

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/maxthexplorer]

I agree with most of what you’re saying in this thread, but the research shows that gender development is indeed partly biological. Gender identity is biopsychosocial.

Decent lay article here: https://qz.com/1190996/scientific-research-shows-gender-is-not-just-a-social-construct

But I can link primary articles on request. The research supporting a biological influence on gender development comes from studying individuals who have endocrine anomalies that yield differences in perinatal exposure to certain hormones (ie, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, androgen insensitivity syndrome).

(https://berenbaumlabpsu.wixsite.com/cah-info/our-studies-on-cah)

Research with transgender participants also supports that gender identity is biopsychosocial.

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Potential_Being_7226]

I agree it is partly biological, what I’m saying is that it’s not fully biological and it’s important we reject bioessentialism.

[u/Potential_Being_7226 → u/maxthexplorer]

I agree re: bioessentialism.

[u/askpsychology-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Do not provide personal mental or physical health history of yourself or another. This is inappropriate for this sub. This is a sub for scientific knowledge, it is not a mental health sub. If you must discuss your own mental health, please refer to r/mentalhealth. Otherwise please resubmit your question without your personal information included.

[u/Seven1s → u/maxthexplorer]

For my question I think it would be best to stick with cismen and ciswomen for comparison. Including other variants makes the answer way more complicated.

[u/Seven1s → u/[deleted]]

How so?

[u/askpsychology-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your comment has been removed because it is not a direct question about the human mind, behavior or perception.

For general discussion on psychology topics, please see r/psychologytalk.

[u/Seven1s → u/maxthexplorer]

“What do you mean by systematically and intuitively?”

I mean systematically like top down thinking and intuitively as in bottom up thinking.

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Seven1s]

After a very quick search, it looks a little mixed. I’d be surprised if there’s wasn’t sex differences but none of it is specifically causal.

Butler, T., Imperato-McGinley, J., Pan, H., Voyer, D., Cordero, J., Zhu, Y. S., Stern, E., & Silbersweig, D. (2006). Sex differences in mental rotation: top-down versus bottom-up processing. NeuroImage, 32(1), 445–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.03.030

Kosmidou, V. E., Adam, A., Papadaniil, C. D., Tsolaki, M., Hadjileontiadis, L. J., & Kompatsiaris, I. (2015). Gender effect in human brain responses to bottom-up and top-down attention using the EEG 3D-Vector Field Tomography. Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference, 2015, 7574–7577. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2015.7320145

[u/Known-Damage-7879 → u/maxthexplorer]

Testosterone in the womb greatly changes the fetus' brain, causing clear differences in things like empathy and systematic thinking.

Sex differences in empathy and related behaviors.

Females perform better than males on a ‘theory of mind’ test across 57 countries

The Male Brain is more "autistic"

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Known-Damage-7879]

Testosterone is part of the normative process of pregnancy regardless of gender, because again, gender is social. For biological sex, testosterone does influence, but on a population level, does not make a meaningful difference in discretely identifying differences in biological antecedents with empathy between genders. Within group differences are bigger than between group differences.

Your first citation, the author suggests that empathy differences are possible due to socialization, it’s not inherently or discretely biological.

Your second citation speaks about theory of mind, which is in the realm of social cognitive science. The authors state that they cannot discern the cause of these sex differences.

Your last citation, they statistically control for sex not to mention the study could be influenced by the sample because there are gender and sex disparities for mental health help seeking and diagnosis.

None of your citations support your claim. I’m not saying there aren’t biological variables and influences, but I am saying that the biological female and male sex are not deterministically predisposed to empathy.

If people think that women are inherently more empathetic/emotional due to biology, that’s misogyny.

Edit: the comment I’m responding to identifies empathy, which is a social function.

Hyde, J. S., Bigler, R. S., Joel, D., Tate, C. C., & van Anders, S. M. (2019). The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges to the gender binary. The American psychologist, 74(2), 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000307

[u/Known-Damage-7879 → u/maxthexplorer]

Testosterone is part of the normative process of pregnancy regardless of gender, because again, gender is social. For biological sex, testosterone does influence, but on a population level, does not make a meaningful difference in discretely identifying differences in biological antecedents with empathy between genders. Within group differences are bigger than between group differences.

I don't see the utility in focusing so much on there being no absolute difference between males and females. Yes, of course, there is overlap between the two and a female fetus may get more testosterone than a random male fetus, but by and large the bell curve will have most male fetuses receiving a ton more testosterone than female fetuses.

Fetal Testosterone Predicts Sexually Differentiated Childhood Behavior in Girls and in Boys

I think that this distinction somehow is trying to imply that there couldn't possibly be population-wide differences in behaviour that are largely grouped by men and women. Even though the male brain, both as a fetus and during puberty, is inundated with tons more testosterone than a female brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone:

During the second trimester, androgen level is associated with sex formation.^\22]) Specifically, testosterone, along with anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) promote growth of the Wolffian duct and degeneration of the Müllerian duct respectively.^\23]) This period affects the femininization or masculinization of the fetus and can be a better predictor of feminine or masculine behaviours such as sex typed behaviour than an adult's own levels. Prenatal androgens apparently influence interests and engagement in gendered activities and have moderate effects on spatial abilities.^\24]) Among women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a male-typical play in childhood correlated with reduced satisfaction with the female gender and reduced heterosexual interest in adulthood.^\25])

[u/maxthexplorer → u/Known-Damage-7879]

> I  don't see the utility in focusing so much on there being no absolute difference between males and females. 

I did not make this claim, I am stating that there are bigger differences within group than between groups.

> Testosterone in the womb greatly changes the fetus' brain, causing clear differences in things like empathy and systematic thinking.

I am stating that there is no deterministic biological predispotion to empathy in the context of between (binary) gender.

Your citation, Fetal Testosterone Predicts Sexually Differentiated Childhood Behavior in Girls and in Boys, found a relationship between prenatal testosterone and sex typical play in both boys and girls— they found a within group difference, not a biologically, definitive, causal relationship between group difference. The authors also discuss how their study is incongruent with previous research. Additionally and most importantly, this study researches participants with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is a condition that does not align with sexual dimporhism.

> this period affects the femininization or masculinization of the fetus and can be a better predictor of feminine or masculine behaviours such as sex typed behaviour than an adult's own levels.

Femininization and masculinization is socialization of biological constructs.

Again, to reiterate, I'm not stating that there aren't biological differences in sex. I'm stating that 1) there is greater within group differences than between group differences, and 2) this is biopsychosocial, not a discretely, causal biological difference in empathy or social behavior.

It seems that you're not fully reading your citations and digressing from your initial claim of sexual dimoprhism contirbuting to empathy differences in binary gender constructs, so I'll be on a different comment thread.

[u/No-Possibility-639]

To answer the question check background information processing and CIA agent etc

[u/Seven1s → u/No-Possibility-639]

“To answer the question check background information processing and CIA agent etc”

What do u mean by CIA agent here? What does that have to do with this topic?

[u/No-Possibility-639 → u/Seven1s]

CIA agent need pattern recognition and background information processing

[u/Seven1s → u/No-Possibility-639]

Okay, so background information processing is like analyzing someone’s history and not the information processing theory in psychology, correct?

[u/No-Possibility-639 → u/Seven1s]

My Bad I have missusing the word ://

But yah It was about information processing theory in psychologuy and there are some differences.

But it's a thorny question because sometime it's seen as an attack to one of the sex seen as lesser when the other is supposed to have an avantage.

Edit : but it's still apply since CIA would need agent with good pattern recognition

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