User:J.birch2/sandbox/Sex differences in psychology

Historical Background

Francis Galton

Francis Galton, 1912

The issue of structural sex differences has been a controversial matter of debate for the past two centuries. Francis Galton, the pioneer of differential psychology, a sub-area of psychology which takes particular interest in the psychological study of sex differences, dedicated much of his work to empirically investigate and interpret the issue. Although he may be considered as the "father of the modern study of psychological sex differences" because of his early interest in the field, his research was tainted by both personal and social prejudice, as well as lack of adequate statistical evidence supporting some of his claims. His primary findings regarded the difference in strength between the gender, which, he claimed, justified the commonly used expression "the weaker sex", when referring to women. On the mental level, he correlated sensory discrimination, which he declared to be more prevalent in men, with intelligence, thus inferring women's intellectual inferiority, even affirming that women had less of an impact in affecting innate intelligence in offspring.

George Romanes

George Romanes, 1896

Evolutionary biologist George Romanes analysed mental differences of men and women in a paper published in Popular Science Monthly in 1887. Based on Charles Darwin's account of secondary sexual characters occurring in animals, Romanes affirms such characteristics don't only occur in physical features (such as the lighter brains of females) but in psychological ones as well. He focuses on these distinctions between genders in the case of mankind, reaching a similar conclusion on women's intellectual and physiological inferiority as Galton. In his opinion, the disparity increases concerning origination, judgement (that of women being trustworthy only on small matters and never on intellectual matters), information acquisition as well as emotional stability. He concedes however that women have more refined senses (higher evolution of sense-organs, rapidity of perception and of thought) and are predisposed to other qualities such as "kindness, compassion, forgiveness and faith". Furthermore, he explores the possible connection between these differences and the evolution of society, particularly concerning the educational disadvantages which women have had throughout history.

Charles Dana

In a 1915 article for the The New York Times, American physician Charles Dana criticised the emerging efforts to achieve Women's suffrage, using neurological differences between male and female brains, as well as differences in their spinal chords and pelvic girdle as support for his personal condemnation of the movement. Dana claimed that there are "fundamental differences between the bony and nervous structures of women and men" which, he claimed, are one of the causes of women's inefficiency in "political initiative or of judicial authority in a community's organisation". Other arguments utilised by Dana included women's proneness to mental instability as well as claims of women's weaker intellectual capacity.

Theoretical Approaches to the study of Psychological Gender Differences

Evolutionary Theory - Sexual Selection, Parental Investment and Natural Selection

The main aspects of Darwin's evolutionary theory used in literature to confirm or deny psychological gender differences have been natural selection and sexual selection . Sexual selection has often been invoked to support the existence of sex differences. It consists of two processes: the competition among members of one gender (usually male) for mating privileges with members of the other gender (usually female) and the subsequent mating preference and choice-making of the other gender with members of the first gender. This process can be thus used to explain physical gender differences (such as increased strength in males) as well as psychological and behavioural traits, such as a difference in aggressiveness. Another connected key concept is parental investment, meaning the behaviours of parents towards their offspring, which increases the offspring's chance of survival. The difference between genders is attributed to the greater parental investment of females, whose increased involvement in child care has led to the evolution of different psychological traits and behavioural patterns.

While evidence for and against evolutionary theories appears to be mixed, some authors raise concerns about this approach, claiming that because ancestral behaviours haven't left any records, much of it could be speculative. Furthermore, they envision a differentiation between genetic inheritance and environmental inheritance, with the latter one playing an equally if not more important role in modern evolutionary thinking.

Contrarily, natural selection has served as evidence for the prevalence of similarities between the genders. Because the process should act equally on both genders, no differences should be created.

Sociocultural Theory

According to the sociocultural theory (also called social role theory), all psychological gender differences are a product of the social division of labour by gender. The theory acknowledges biological differences between women and men (e.g. strength or increased capacity for nurture) and incorporates them into the origin of this division. As a consequence thereof, males and females have been assigned different roles by and in society which led to the development of further differences.

Expectancy-Value Theory

This theory identifies two determinant factors in a person's decision to undertake a challenging task: expectancies (the success expectations of the task) and task values (how interesting/useful/rewarding a task is), which can in turn be influenced by different factors. The evaluation of these two aspects can be observed differently in men and women, for example when considering performances in mathematics or more broadly in STEM careers, females tend to rate their success probability in tasks related to those fields lower than males. This comes as a consequence of stereotyped preconceptions such as that of males as "systemizers" and females as "empathizer", which leads to an invalidation of abilities, performance and self-esteem.

Research on Sex Differences and the Brain- Sex Differences in the Structural Connectome of the Human Brain

Connection-Wise Analysis. (A) Brain networks show increased connectivity in males (Upper) and females (Lower). Analysis on the child (B), adolescent (C), and young adult (D) groups is shown. Interhemispheric connections are shown in blue, and interhemispheric connections are shown in orange.

Ingalhalikar et al. study

In a 2014 study on brain connectivity published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Ingalhalikar et al. attempt to show that there are structural differences in the brain between men and women.^[4] The premise of the research lies in the high scientific and societal interest of sex differences, especially concerning the implications on human behaviour. The study investigates the connectome structures in the brain of 949 participants (427 males, 521 females) ranging from 8 to 22 years old, with this age range divided into three groups: childhood, adolescence, and young adults. The structural connectomes of the participants were modelled with the help of diffusion tensor imaging, connection-wise statistical analysis and regional and global brain network measures.^[4]

According to the authors, the results of the study revealed "fundamental sex differences in the structural architecture of the human brain”. Specifically, they claimed that the images showed that male brains possessed a larger level of within-lobe and intrahemispheric connectivity, while female brains were characterized by larger interhemispheric connectivity and cross-hemispheric participation. Ingalhalikar et al. claimed that “the results suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes”.

The authors explained that brain structural differences between female and male brains developed gradually (see image). Images of the group representative of childhood (aged 8-13.3) showed only minor connectivity differences, “suggesting the begging of a divergence in developmental trajectory”. In adolescents (aged 13.4-17) and young adults (aged 17.1-22) differences became more pronounced, with the images showing more intrahemispheric connectivity in males brains and more interhemispheric connectivity in females brains.

Press Release

The University of Pennsylvania, the researcher's home institution, issued a press release which conveyed the results of the study by Ingalhalikar et al. and set the precedent for much of the following media fixation. The press release reported that “in the study, the researchers found that females displayed greater connectivity in the supratentorial region, which contains the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain, between the left and right hemispheres. Males, on the other hand, displayed greater connectivity within each hemisphere. By contrast, the opposite prevailed in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that plays a major role in motor control, where males displayed greater inter-hemispheric connectivity and females displayed greater intra-hemispheric connectivity."

These results were taken to suggest that the male brain is "structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. In contrast, in females, the wiring goes between the left and right hemispheres, suggesting that they facilitate communication between the analytical and intuition."

Although structural differences were found in the male and female brain, inference to the function of these structural differences were purely speculative: "These maps show us a stark difference - and complementarity - in the architecture of the human brain that helps provide us a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others." For example, the press release speculated that the study might help explain why "on average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group." However, no mention of this appears in the original study.

Media reporting

The study has been reported on by various newspapers, journals and tabloids and the results have been interpreted in a variety of ways. Headlines from the Daily Mail, The Guardian or The Economist relied on the press release announcing the paper and used it as confirmation for the existence of "real, hard-wired differences" between the brains of men and women.

Although some articles attempt to caution readers that the findings were not conclusive, or that differences could be due to other factors such as brain size or whether the participants were left- or right-handed and that the results are statistical averages, most articles show a serious misunderstanding of the study's results and treat them as conclusive explanations of behavioral differences between men and women. Therefore, even though the study itself only highlights structural differences in the strengths of certain neural connections and provides no empirical evidence on the correlation between functional tasks and the neural structure of the brain, media reports have interpreted these results as suggesting that men are better at a single task or spatial skills and women are better at multitasking or emotional skills. They seem to infer that men tend to be more rational and women more emotional. Moreover, they reproduced one of the figures of the study (see image, figure 2A) with no further clarification of its statistical nature.

Consequently, the reports in the media strengthen the biased public comprehension of gender differences (i.e. stereotypes) with representations such as the Daily Mail's cartoon showing a woman multitasking various housework activities such as cleaning, making tea, and sweeping. Opposite of the woman there is a man sitting and reading a newspaper entitled "Women are better at multi-tasking". Such imaginary within media reporting evokes stereotypes and may influence the work distribution of men and women.

Content analysis

O'Connor and Joffe analysed the way the results of Ingalhalikar et al. were discussed in five different communication channels: the original scientific article, a press release, the traditional news media, online reader comments, and blog entries. Their analysis indicates that the information presented in the scientific journal was given "increasingly diversified, personalized, and politicized meaning" in media outlets.

More specifically, the majority of media outlets presented the scientific findings as vindicating pre-existing gender stereotypes. The press release by the University of Pennsylvania inspired the framing of the results in this fashion, with its opening sentence reading that the results ‘‘lend credence to some commonly-held beliefs about [men and women’s] behaviour.’’ One such commonly-held belief is the difference in male and female ability to multitask. Men are commonly believed to be better at focusing on single tasks, whereas women are believed to achieve multi-tasking more effectively. Although the original study lent no evidence for this alleged behavioural difference, the majority of the media outlets interpreted the study to do so. 

Criticism

Studies in sex differences have attracted significant criticisms, especially from feminist scholars such as Cordelia Fine, Gina Rippon, Daphna Joel and Rebecca Jordan-Young. These criticisms largely target methodological aspects of such studies, as well as the way they are interpreted and represented in the media, and how they could be used as reinforcement of stereotypes and gender-based biases. The research conducted by Ingalhalikar et al. is a high-profile example that has been heavily criticized for implying specific functional differences between men and women.

Criticism from Langton and Dupré

Rae Langton and John Dupré describe Ingalhalikar et al.'s study as “yet another deeply confused 'hard-wired brain' story.” They argue that “[i]f the mind is the brain, any mental difference will be a brain difference.” They further claim that the neuroscientists make an underlying assumption about "hard-wiredness" of the brain structure, in the sense that it is not malleable and biologically predetermined. However, if this were not the case, and the brain structure also depended on external influences such as education and social behaviour, then sex differences found in the brain would only mirror the differences in society. This would in turn imply that, contrary to Ingalhalikar et al's claim, it is not necessarily the case that there are sex differences in the brain.

Criticism from Joel and Tarrasch

Daphna Joel and Ricardo Tarrasch argue that Ingalhalikar et al.'s study mistakenly alleges that, based on the potential link between connectome data and the data from separate behavioural studies, there might be a qualitative difference between them. Ingalhalikar et al. present their findings in such a way that readers are led to infer behavioural differences from brain structural differences. In fact, however, they only found a quantitative difference in strength of connections between male and female brains. Furthermore, Joel and Tarrasch doubt whether the study provides an accurate picture of the human connectome, since not all of the statistical data collected is presented. Thus, it is difficult for readers to assess the strength of these connections in the wider context of the data. Given the large sample size of the study, even small differences in strength could be statistically significant.

Reply from Ingalhalikar et al.

Ingalhalikar et al. address the above criticisms in "Reply to Joel and Tarrasch: On misreading and shooting the messenger". First, "figure 2A" (the image widely shared throughout the media, seen above) should not be used to depict "representative" individuals, the data should rather represent averages in the connectivity differences across the observed population. Second, although they agree that "the causal relationship between structure and function is difficult to explain", they criticize that Joel and Tarrasch's paper does not suggest any conclusions beyond what is taken to be scientific consensus on functions of different brain regions. Therefore, it would be wrong to make functional suggestions such as multitasking, perception, social skills, memory as depicted in the press coverage.

Research on Sex Differences and the Brain - The Case of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)

The study on prenatal hormones can be a useful insight into possible sex differences in the brain. In particular, it is useful in providing evidence for 'brain organisation theory', a widely accepted theory, according to which there are inborn differences in the male and female brain, caused by differences in prenatal hormone levels. Melissa Hines' version of the theory asserts that "Male and Female foetuses differ in testosterone concentrations beginning as early as week 8 of gestation. This early hormone difference exerts permanent influences on brain development and behaviour". Evidence for the theory comes from individuals with Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a condition in which high androgen levels during foetal development cause genetic females to be born with atypical or male-appearing genitalia and unusually high levels of prenatal testosterone. Studies of CAH individuals, especially of females with the condition, reveal that they show increased 'male-typical' behaviour across their lifespan. This is regarded as strong evidence for the theory.

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia and children's sex-typed behaviour

Melissa Hines has studied the influence of prenatal testosterone exposure on children's sex-typed play behaviour, particularly accentuated in cases of CAH. She acknowledges that sex-typical behaviour is mainly acquired through social learning and the processes leading to gender identification influence behaviours and choices, such as preferences for different sex-typed toys. However, she sustains that prenatal levels of testosterone, and hormonal differentiation in general, are equally as influential on behaviour across the lifespan. She supports this claim with empirical evidence from a study of children with CAH. In her study, she assembles a sample of fifty CAH children, and a sample of relatives of the children without CAH. Parents of the children were asked to record the amount of time their children spent playing with typical toys for boys and typical toys for girls. The sample was partitioned into the following groups: boys with CAH, unaffected boys, girls with CAH, and unaffected girls. It was reported that the average amount of time spent playing with "boys' toys" was significantly higher in the 'CAH-girls' group than in the unaffected girls group. Meanwhile no statistical difference was found between the boys groups.

Hines addresses possible counterarguments, like the parents' masculinisation of the children's behaviour due to their virilized genitalia by showcasing various findings, such as studies on non-human primates, which seem to refute this hypothesis. Her paper also presents arguments for how prenatal hormone exposure contributes to the determination of sexual orientation as well as to sex-differentiated personality characteristics and psychiatric disorders.

The relevance of environmental factors in congenital adrenal hyperplasia research

In her studies on CAH, Rebecca Jordan-Young criticises genetic deterministic approaches such as the brain organisation theory, mainly because of their neglect of key contextual aspects which play determinant roles. She highlights four variables that have a profound impact on the psycho-sexual development and behaviour of patients with CAH, especially on females namely (a) the psychological effects of being diagnosed with CAH; (b) the effects of the intensive medical interventions and surveillance; (c) the direct effects of genital morphology on their sexuality and (d) the effect of the masculinisation expectations that affect both the development and the gender socialisation of girls with CAH. She argues that the increased male-typical behaviour observed in females with CAH throughout their lifespan can just as easily be explained by these factors as by prenatal hormones. For example, the surgery that CAH females receive makes heterosexual intercourse painful, which may explain why a higher than typical proportion of CAH females develop a sexual interest in women later on in life. Regarding the increased male-typical play behaviour observed in CAH girls, Jordan-Young argues that we should not overlook potential reporting bias from the parents. Jordan-Young's overall thesis in brainstorm, is that defenders of brain organisation theory systematically ignore these alternative explanations, and therefore ignore variables that could be relevant.

Public Debate

Frequent controversial aspects

Authors and scientists such as Cordelia Fine, Gina Rippon, Rebecca Jordan-Young and Daphna Joel have repeatedly advised for a precautionary and more scientifically rigorous approach to results of studies on neurological and psychological sex differences. . Many counterarguments have been advanced to their criticism, against which these authors have defended themselves. There are multiple main controversial aspects arising from these debates. The first ones concern the reliability of the result because of methodological inaccuracies (especially the occurrence of false positives and false negatives, the impossibility or difficulty of replicating the results and issues concerning the sample size, often considered too small to produce meaningful results). The second problem concerns the effect size ("a measure of how large the difference is, equal to the mean for males minus the mean for females divided by the standard deviation"), with criticism that a statistical significance doesn't necessarily imply a theoretical or practical significance in the real world and that a misinterpretation of the difference's size leads to subsequent spurious results. The type of the difference (whether it is a momentary "snapshot result" or whether it varies across a lifespan and whether and how much it has been impacted by environmental factors) as well as its origin (as a direct or indirect effect of sex) are two further debatable issues. The latter in particular, has sparked a larger conversation on the plasticity of the brain, considered by some as a very relevant variable in the consideration of differences, because it allows the brain to be permeable and malleable and produce differences as an outcome of external factors. Others however (Cahill, 2019) recognise this particular feature of the brain but maintain that it only plays a restricted role within biological boundaries.

Perhaps the most controversial topic is the interpretation of findings on sex differences. Fine et al. accuse many researchers of "neurosexism", namely, of inferring behavioural differences from neurological ones without sufficient evidence and often as a result of misinterpretation of data because of the above-mentioned errors. This can lead to evidence of gendered brain differences being over-stated within the media and popular literature (labelled by Rippon as "neurotrash") and can play a role in actively shaping gender norms within society.

“The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience That Shatters The Myth Of The Female Brain”

In “The Gendered Brain”, Gina Rippon provides an overview on how the misinterpretation of findings leads to misinformations by arguing that modern neuroscience has failed to identify any decisive differences in the brain linked to sex. It was long believed that language-processing was clustered in women’s brains, whereas in men’s brains it was spread evenly across the hemispheres. But as we find out in Rippon’s book, meta-analysis carried out over a decade later disproved this claim.

Rippon also takes on the apparent “neurosexism” found in studies of gendered brain differences. While these studies rarely fall into the category of barefaced sexism (such as Gustave Le Bon’s declaration that women have evolved at a slower pace than men), they instead focus on complementarity. For example, Ingalhalikar et al’s results on the structural brain differences between the sexes were often presented as proof of two diametrically opposed brains, one for men and one for women. However, as Rippon notes, there were more similar than dissimilar connections and the study failed to control for puberty-related maturation.

That men and women behave differently cannot be accounted for by looking at the inner workings of the brain or as a result of prenatal biology, Rippon claims. According to her, the differences are the outcome of gendered worlds, which produce gendered brains. Because society treats genders differently, our plastic brains reflect this reality. Factors such as the weak evidence for sex differences in newborns and the starkly gendered world we inhabit, leads to “the brain-building cycle of differential expectations, self-confidence and risk-taking that drives boys and girls down different trajectories of career and success.”

Baron-Cohen Criticism

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychology at Cambridge University, argues that Rippon’s claim that there are no innate differences between the brains of men and women goes too far. First, Rippon focuses on binary differences between the sexes. However, this is a straw man; scientists are instead concerned with average sex differences when comparing the brains of men and women. Baron-Cohen gives the largest study (over 500 000 participants) of sex differences as an example. The study found that on average women reported higher empathy (40% vs 24%) while men had a higher interest in systems (40% vs 25%). There is, of course, an overlap, but on average men and women differed. Consider differences in height: some women are taller than men, and vice versa, but one average men are over 5 inches taller. For example, as Cohen argues, "given a free choice of which toys to play with, more girls than boys will play with dolls, enacting social and emotional themes. When children are put together to play with a little movie player that has only one eye-piece, overall boys tend to get more of their fair share of looking down the eye piece. They just shoulder the other boys out of the way. Or if you leave out those big plastic cars that children can ride on, what you see is that more little boys play the ‘ramming’ game. They deliberately drive the vehicle into another child. The little girls ride around more carefully, avoiding the other children more often." He uses this example to argue that girls statistically tend to be more sensitive to others than boys.

However, one can still follow Langton and Dupré's line of reasoning to argue that even small boys and girls are affected by the societal bias and nurtured in a specific way that leads to the above-mentioned difference in attitude. If this is true, the difference in toy preference can be explained by nurture rather than nature. However, Cohen's second argument focuses on prenatal sex differences in the brain which rules out the influence of nurture. In 2018 scientists found that the brains of newborn boys were 6% larger than their female counterparts (after controlling for birth weight) and tended to contain more cortical neurons. Additionally, Baron-Cohen and his team at Cambridge showed that newborn boys focused longer on objects, such as crib mobiles, whereas newborn girls stared longer at human faces. Other differences were also present: boys had larger medial temporal cortexes, involved in sensory processing, and girls had larger dorsolateral prefrontal motor, involved in cognitive flexibility, planning and self-control. Cohen argues that such prenatal differences are partly determined by a biological factor, prenatal testosterone. Results of this kind are particularly troubling for Rippon’s thesis since newborns have not yet been exposed to the “gendered world”.

Larry Cahill Criticism

Larry Cahill, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, has also criticised Rippon’s argument. He compares the review title in Nature, “Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains”, to something as absurd as “The myth that evolution applies to humans.” In fact, soon after the publication of “The Gendered Brain”, both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Lancet Neurology published studies contradicting Rippon’s central thesis. For Cahill the overwhelming neurological evidence shows that “the variable of biological sex influences all levels of mammalian brain function, down to the cellular/genetic substrate, which of course includes the human mammalian brain.” While we may not be able to tell how sex influences the brain, it is undoubtedly clear that the human brain is a sex-influenced organ.

A number of direct criticisms are levelled at “The Gendered Brain”. First Rippon seems to ignore modern research on animal brains, leading to what Cahill refers to as a denial of evolution. For example, a large number of studies have established average sex differences in risk-taking and play behaviour in mammalian brain function. Secondly, Rippon unfairly praises a number of studies in her book. Cahill focuses on a research project by Joel et al exploring structural brain scans. Joel at al conclude the brains of men and women are actually unisex, indistinguishable with respect to male or female mosaics (our collection of male- and female-average traits). Cahill described this study as rigged from the start, and running counter to three further studies highlighting discriminability between the sexes in human brain structure and function. Like our bodies, male and female brains are both the same and different to varying degrees. Cahill stresses that this is not his conclusion, but the conclusion of neuroscience.

"Delusions of Gender"

In her 2010 book, 'Delusions of Gender', Fine challenges the theory that the male brain is hardwired for systematising, while the female brain is hardwired for empathising. Her thesis is that much of the neuroscientific research that supports the theory lacks rigour, and only serves to reinforce harmful and inaccurate stereotypes about men and women; a phenomenon she calls 'neurosexism'. Fine supports her criticism with a number case studies. For example, she criticises a 2000 study by Baron-Cohen et al . The study compared the visual interest of newborns in a mobile versus a face, with the aim of testing the hypothesis that males are born with a greater interest in machines, and females a greater interest in people. The study reports that on average, male newborns looked at the mobile for longer, while female newborns looked at the face for longer. This was taken as confirmation of the hypothesis in question. Fine criticises the study on the grounds that inadequate measures were taken to blind the experimenter to the sex of the baby, which may have led to expectation bias. Another point of critique she puts forward is that the order in which the newborns were shown the mobile and the face may have affected the results, due to fatigue effects..

Baron-Cohen's First Response

Baron-Cohen responds to these criticisms in a review of Fine's book. Regarding Fine's concerns about fatigue affects affecting the eye-gaze behaviour of the newborns, Baron-Cohen responds that counterbalancing effects were built into the experiment design. Regarding Fine's concerns about potential expectation bias from the experimenter, Baron-Cohen responds that an independent panel of judges was asked to code the videotapes of the newborns, in which only their eyes were visible, making it impossible to judge the sex of the baby.

He then counter-attacks accusing Fine of committing the "old fallacy of assuming that the absence of a treatment is the cause of a condition", an instance of the fallacy of the inverse. This relates to Fine's claim that social factors play a role determining how men and woman perform in behavioural tests, and that this was neglected by the scientist's experiments. But, while Baron-Cohen acknowledges that social variables, such as confidence and prior expectation, play a role in influencing performance; he denies that they are the only source of behavioural differences between sexes. Further, he underlines that Fine's belief in extreme social determinism of neurodevelopmental conditions is unable to explain why autism, learning difficulties, and language delay affect boys more often than girls.

For Baron-Cohen, Fine's denial of the biological basis of gender differences is because of "blurring of science with politics". But one can be committed to gender equality and be against all forms of discrimination in society, while still acknowledging that sex differences are partly the result of that biological influences. For Baron-Cohen these two positions are not opposed to each other.

Fine's First Response to Baron-Cohen

Fine replies to Baron-Cohen's review in a published letter to The Psychologist. Fine dismisses Baron-Cohen's allegation of bias as an attempt to stereotype her as a feminist ideologue who turns a blind eye to scientific evidence. On the contrary, she argues, her work, in fact, debunks the ideologically driven agenda of those researchers who, without solid scientific evidence, prematurely argue for sex differences to be hard-wired.

In her response to Baron-Cohen's rejection of social determinism, she emphasises that if a small social intervention such as boosting girls confidence before a math test can already equalise sex difference in performance, then one may reasonably assume a much greater effect if one were to eradicate gender stereotypes embedded in our culture. Furthermore, she argues against Baron-Cohen's critique, that her argument for social determinism does not need to be attributable to atypical development, such as autism and learning difficulties.

She maintains both of her original criticisms regarding the methodology in Baron-Cohen's newborn baby study. In response to the claim that counterbalancing was used against order effects, she points out that the report only refers to the order being randomised. However no information was provided to reassure that stimulus order was not a confounding variable. In response to the claim that an independent panel of judges codes the videotapes in order to tackle expectation bias, she points out that the experimenter cum stimulus may have already inadvertently influenced the babies' gaze, in which case the measure of introducing independent judges comes too late.

Baron-Cohen's Second Response to Fine

Baron-Cohen responds a second time to Fine in a published letter to The Psychologist. Although Baron-Cohen stands to his point that political bias might have influenced Fine's work, his tone is less accusatory than the previous one and he states his regrets, that his comments are interpreted as an instance of stereotyping.

Regarding his newborn baby study, he concedes that the design is not perfect, but continues to doubt that this had any effects on the experimental findings. He further states that Fine's criticisms have prompted him to think of ways to improve it. One way to repeat the experiment and completely avoid confounders would be to present the stimuli to the babies on a computer screen, rather than having experimenters showing it to them.

Fine's Second Response to Baron-Cohen

In Fine's second letter responding to Baron-Cohen, she elaborates on her defence against the accusation of bias. She argues that in her book 'Delusions of Gender' she does not criticise the sex difference research on political grounds, but instead holds any of the evidence scientists provide as support for essentialist claims to the highest scientific standard. But this does not mean that political bias has no role in discussions on science. She references the philosopher of science Heather Douglas, who argues that political values have a legitimate, indirect role in scientific reasoning, by "shifting the level of what counts as sufficient warrant for an empirical claim".

She argues that much of the disagreement on sex differences in behaviour can be explained as the result of different political judgements about the appropriate burden of proof. While Baron-Cohen cites a small pilot functional neuroimaging study as evidence for sex differences in theory of mind, Fine denies that this study presents conclusive evidence. One way to improve the debate, she argues, is to be more transparent about the political biases and values at work when conducting scientific research.

References

External links

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