Sex differences in social behavior and cognition: Utility of sexual selection for hypothesis generation

Abstract

Knickmeyer and colleagues’ (this issue) provide intriguing evidence for a nascent and possibly hormonally influenced sex difference, favoring preschool girls, for some aspects of theory of mind (ToM), that is, skill at making inferences about the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people. The study is important because the measure used to assess the associated generation of mental and affective state terms and intentional propositions to describe object-to-object interactions is more sensitive to sex differences then most ToM tests used at this age. The study also contributes with the use of an evolutionary perspective to generate hypotheses regarding sex differences in ToM and social behavior. In fact, over the past three decades, Darwin’s (1871) evolutionary mechanisms of sexual selection (described below) have been used by biologists to