Let's talk about sex roles: what affects perceptions of sex differences in animal behaviour?

Abstract

In the field of sexual selection, it is common to encounter the idea of ‘sex roles’: choosy and caring females and competitive and promiscuous males. Despite criticism of these stereotypes from some evolutionary biologists, sex roles still appear as a norm in much of the sexual selection-related literature. This may be because scientists anthropomorphize animal behaviours, which raises the question of whether demographic traits and experiences can influence one's perception regarding sex differences in nature. Here we tested whether age, gender, country and experiences are associated with different perceptions of sex differences in nature. We conducted a survey in which we asked participants about their perception of the frequency at which certain behaviours associated with sex roles (promiscuity, mate choice, intrasexual competition and parental care) occur in nonhuman animals for each sex. We found that participants' country, research experience with certain taxonomic groups and research experience with sex-specific topics were associated with different perceptions of sex differences in nonhuman animals; participants from more gender-unequal countries showed greater agreement with the idea of sex roles. In contrast, participants who had experience with mechanisms not predicted by the idea of sex roles such as male mate choice, paternal care and female–female competition showed lower agreement with the idea of sex roles than other participants. We suggest that increasing social diversity in academia and encouraging researchers to diversify the sexes and taxa of animals they use to investigate reproductive behaviours could challenge pre-existing biases in animal sex differences. • The idea of sex roles represents a stereotypical view of females and males. • Researchers' perceptions of sex differences in nature are diverse. • Agreement with the idea of sex roles can depend on research experience. • Drawing broad conclusions based on current data can be misleading.