Direction Of Sex Differences Research Articles

Jewish Culture and Sex Differences in Psychological Differentiation

Abstract The hypothesis that degree, direction, and magnitude of sex difference in psychological differentiation is partially a function of cultural influence was tested. Ss were 120 ten-year-old boys and girls from Jewish populations differing in their fidelity to the cultural patterns of Eastern-European Jews. The less traditional group attained more differentiated scores on four measures—even when verbal ability was controlled. On two additional measures the differences did not reach statistical significance. Among both groups girls drew more sophisticated pictures on the Figure Drawing Test than did boys. Additionally, more traditional girls obtained more differentiated scores on Object Assembly—a direction of sex difference opposite to that usually obtained in Western cultures. On Block Design and Embedded Figures the higher scores attained by girls did not reach statistical significance. Sex differences on Rod and Frame were in the usual direction; i.e., boys obtained more differentiated scores than...

Extraversion, neuroticism and different aspects of self-reported aggression.

Sixty-two male, and 57 female university students were administered tests of extraversion, neuroticism and aggression. Different forms of aggression were found to have different personality correlates, and the correlation matrices of the male and female samples were largely dissimilar. The direction of sex differences in subtest scores seemed to depend on the type of aggression measured. Socioeconomic class was not significantly related to any of the aggression scales.

Effect of age and sex on lung-colony-forming efficiency of injected mouse tumour cells.

The i.v. injection of a specified number of cells of either an Ehrlich ascites tumour (ELD) or spontaneous mouse mammary adenocarcinomas (MA) into C3H mice yielded a number of lung colonies which varied significantly with the age or sex of recipient mice. The yield was higher in mice of 71 weeks than in those of 15 weeks, except for MA cells injected into females, when the yield was higher in the younger mice. Sex did not influence very significantly the yield of colonies from ELD cells; in the case of MA cells the direction of sex differences depended on age. A difference in the effect of pre-immunization with age was not observed.

Superior Performance by Women in a Visual Orienting Task: A Limit on the Concept of Field Dependence

15 women and 24 men were compared on a visual orienting task requiring observers to set a luminous line to a vertical position while viewing from a laterally tilted body position. No visible frame of reference was available. Women made no significant error as a group, while the men's average settings deviated approximately 7° from vertical, in the same direction as body tilt. This result reverses the direction of sex differences usually reported on orienting tasks and specifies a limitation on the usefulness of the “field dependence” concept as a predictor of comparative spatial performances of men and women.

Age and sex differences in responses to Embedded Figures and reversible figures

Responses to Embedded Figures and to a series of Reversible Figures, as given by 9-year-old, 11-year-old, and 13-year-old subjects, were assessed with a view of identifying systematic age and sex differences. The present findings show that: (1) the ontogenetic course of sex differences in perceptual responses follows a zigzagging and overlapping pattern rather than a unidirectional path, and data obtained from adult subjects may offer no valid clues with regard to the existence or direction of sex differences at younger age levels; (2) a particular pattern of sex differences uncovered in a specific perceptual response category supplies no valid indices for the existence of similar sex difference patterns in other and even related response categories; and (3) age changes in perceptual responses, like those pertaining to the pattern of sex differences, also appear to be task, response, and in some cases, sex specific.