what’s the difference between men and
women well how do they differ well the
first thing we might observe is that if
you look at personality differences
between prepubescent boys and girls
they’re not very large boys and girls
don’t differ in terms of their their
trait neuroticism for example what
happens is that when puberty kicks in
women’s trait neuroticism Rises and it
stays higher than men for the rest of
their life and this is why you see this
reflected in the different kinds of
psychopathology that beset the two sexes
so men are over-represented in
alcoholism drug abuse antisocial
personality and a host of learning
disorders as well as that attention
deficit disorder and women are
over-represented in depression and
anxiety primarily that seems to be
tightly associated with higher levels of
trait neuroticism because maybe it’s if
you’re at the 95th percentile or higher
let’s say in trait neuroticism there
isn’t much different than difference
between that and being somewhat prone to
depression and anxiety and because the
curves overlap you know the curves
aren’t identical the normal
distributions are identical for men and
women you tilt the one to the to the
right to the women’s curve to the right
towards higher levels of neuroticism you
go out you look for the person in twenty
who has the highest levels of negative
emotion it’s much more likely to be
female than male okay so let’s see if we
can figure out why so we’re gonna tell
you some things basic differences
between men and women and you can tell
me what you think about it if you if you
agree or disagree
okay first size differential emerges
between men and women at puberty right
because boys and girls are roughly the
same size and roughly the same strength
but men get bigger at puberty when the
testosterone kicks in and more
importantly not only do they get taller
and heavier but their upper body
strength is much higher and that’s a
real issue for for combat because human
beings punch there’s other animals that
do that kangaroos do that too way so
we’re not we’re not the only people that
punch but we have clubs on the ends of
our arms and so that’s how we defend
ourselves and so if you have a lot of
upper body strength especially you show
across the shoulders and you’re heavier
then you can step into the punch and
it’s a lot more devastating now it is
the case that if you look at the
statistics for physical altercations in
marriage women attack their husbands
more often
the husband’s attack their wives well
you think why is that well let’s assume
that there isn’t any reason other than
both people in a relationship can get
upset and the women know that if they
hit their husbands nothing’s really
going to happen right because if you’re
a real woman about that high and your
husband is say my height your unless you
hit me with an object or something that
sharp the probability that you’re gonna
do me any serious damage is pretty low
you might hurt me but if I do the
reverse and hit you and I really hit you
and so the reason at least one of the
reasons why women can be more physically
aggressive in minor ways in a
relationship is because everyone knows
the wife and the husband equally that
the consequence of the physical
aggression is much more limited so men
do more serious damage to women but
women are more aggressive in
relationships so that’s interesting so
okay so there’s a boy there’s a body
size difference that’s important to
strength differential that’s important
next thing I think so let’s assume that
the reason that women are higher in
sensitivity to negative emotion is
because the world is actually more
dangerous to women right because that
would be the most logical reason why
there would be a sex difference in a sex
difference in it something like fear or
sensitivity to punishment well first
there’s the danger of physical
altercation second there’s the sexual
danger
so women become sexually vulnerable at
puberty and why do I say vulnerable
well it’s straightforward it’s because
the cost of sex for women is way higher
than it is for men or it certainly has
been throughout our evolutionary history
because if a man has an unwanted sexual
encounter well then he walks away and
maybe he’s persecuted by the state or
prosecuted by the state for it but if a
woman has an unwanted unwarranted or
incautious sexual encounter and she ends
up pregnant then well in traditional
societies that’s you’re just done and
even in modern societies that are rich
like ours you’re it’s it’s a I don’t
have to go into that it’s big trouble no
matter what you do about it it’s big
trouble so being being more nervous
about that makes perfect sense but then
here’s the last thing and I think that
woman’s nervous systems are not adapted
to women I think woman’s nervous system
are adapted to the mother-infant dyad
because you are not the same creature
when you have an infant not at all
you’re way more vulnerable and it’s
partly because you have to express their
vulnerability of the infant and you also
have to care for it right so you think
about an infant especially under nine
months so let’s say how are you going to
be wired up if you’re going to optimally
care for an infant under nine months and
I’m saying under nine months because
women generally do the bulk of child
care for infants who are under nine
months old
and part of the reason for that there’s
a whole host of reasons but part of the
reasons for that obviously is that they
breastfeed but imagine what you need to
be wired up biologically in order to
care for an infant first of all they’re
very demanding right because they’re
completely helpless and they’re
demanding 24 hours a day and it’s quite
it’s quite it’s quite an emotional load
and an infant under nine months is never
wrong right
what you do to an infinite or nine
months is when they’re in distress you
always respond you never tell the infant
get your act together and stop whining
right which you can do say to an into a
child that’s 18 months old you can start
having that sort of conversation but
under nine months it’s like nothing is
the infant’s fault it’s surrounded in an
extraordinarily threatening world and
you have to be responsive to what it
needs regardless of what you want and
you have to be very sensitive to the
threats that emerge in the environment
and so I think the price that women pay
for that ability to have an intimate
relationship with infants in the very
earliest stages of development is that
their nervous systems are actually wired
so that they can perform that role
optimally and the disadvantage to that
is that having a temperament like that
doesn’t work that well when you’re
dealing with adult man especially when
you’re dealing with them in a business
environment because it’s not the same
thing not at all it’s a competitive
environment so ok so agreeable people
are compassionate and polite what are
disagreeable people like they’re tough
minded they’re blunt
they’re competitive and they won’t do a
damn thing they don’t want to do so it
isn’t exactly that they’re aggressive
although they will push you the hell out
of their way if you’re in the way
they’re not they’re not like volatile
like you are if you’re high in in in
eroticism it isn’t defensive aggression
it’s more like predatory aggression its
dominance behavior and so for someone
who’s hyah
who’s high highly disagreeable they look
at the world as a place in which they
can compete and win and I’ll tell you a
story I have a friend I gave him my
personality test the big five aspect
scale that Colin DeYoung developed huh
in my lab and I knew he is a
disagreeable guy and by interacting with
I mean he’s even rude to people sort of
spontaneously on the street I actually
like him quite a bit he’s very very
funny he’s also very conscientious so
you can trust him but it’s disagreeable
as hell and so I gave him this test
because I thought it would be funny and
he came out as the most disagreeable
person in 10,000 so reasonably
reasonable in compassion about 30th
percentile but like Oh point zero zero
one in politeness so he’s
extraordinarily blunt and he’ll just say
absolutely anything no matter how
horrible it is and he was often brought
in to corporations to sort of clean them
up so if a corporation was tilting and
not doing well they’d bring him in to
find out who the useless people were and
fire them and I talked to him about that
because I’ve had the missed opportunity
to have to not have graduate students in
my lab for example that weren’t
performing well and I’d find it very
very difficult to you know dress someone
down and certainly difficult to fire
them I just hate it because I’m actually
quite an agreeable person much to my
chagrin and I asked him about that and I
said well what do you do you have to
fire people all the time how do you
handle that he says handle it I enjoy it
and I thought wow that’s so interesting
that someone would have that response I
said well what do you mean you enjoy it
he said look I go into these companies
and I analyze the performance of groups
of people right and there is in those
groups there are people who are really
striving really trying hard and working
themselves really hard and being
productive and then there’s these people
that are just doing nothing they’re
completely in the way they don’t carry
their weight at all they take advantage
every chance they get and they’re always
whining about why they can’t work it’s
like I find out who they are I call them
into my office and I tell them exactly
what they’ve been doing it’s like hit
the road buddy you’ve had your you’ve
had your run of it and I thought oh yeah
okay fair enough you know well I can
tell you you know I’ve had situations in
my lab where I had
performing graduate students and one of
the things that was really awful about
that was that it was really hard on the
high performing graduate students you
know because they felt that even being
in the same category as the people who
weren’t working hard and pulling their
weight devalued what they were doing you
know and that’s exactly right and so
this is also why there’s there’s a
conscientiousness trait and it
agreeableness trade because
conscientious people judge you on your
accomplishments right they don’t give a
damn about your feelings not a bit it’s
like are you doing the work or not
whereas agreeable people think well you
know your mother’s sick and you know
you’ve you’ve got a bunch of family
problems and and we all have to take
care of each other and it’s no wonder
that you’re having a rough time and like
you can’t say that one of those
attitudes is correct and the other isn’t
correct you can’t say that there
wouldn’t be those two dimensions if
there wasn’t something correct about
both of them but you can certainly point
out that often they conflict you know
and so the demand for for inclusiveness
and unity and care and the demand for
high level performance in a hierarchical
structure there are very different
orientations in the world and so it’s
complicated for people who are agreeable
and conscientious and actually I think
often that large corporations and large
large institutions of any sort run on
the unheralded labor of people who are
high in agreeable lists and high in
conscientiousness and they’re
disproportionately women and my
experience in large institutions has
been that if you want to hire someone to
exploit appropriately no not
appropriately if you want to hire
someone to exploit productively you hire
middle-aged women who are hyper
conscientious and who are agreeable
because they’ll do everything they won’t
take credit for it and they won’t
complain and that’s nasty and I think
that happens all the time and so one of
the things you have to be careful of if
you’re agreeable is not to be exploited
because you’ll line up to be exploited
and I think the reason for that is
because you’re wired to be exploited by
infants and so that just doesn’t work so
well in that actual world and one of the
things one of the things that happens
very often in psychotherapy you know
people come to psychotherapy for
multiple reasons but one of them is they
often come because they’re too agreeable
and so what they get is
so-called assertiveness training
although it’s not exactly assertiveness
that’s being trained what it is is the
ability to learn how to negotiate on
your own behalf and one of the things I
tell agreeable people especially if
their conscientious is say what you
think tell the truth about what you
think there’s gonna be things you think
that you think are nasty and harsh and
they probably are nasty and harsh but
they’re also probably true and you need
to bring those up to the forefront and
deliver the message and it’s not
straightforward at all because agreeable
people do not like conflict
not at all they smooth the water you
know and you can see you can see why
that is in accordance with the
hypothesis that I’ve been putting
forward you don’t want conflict around
infants it’s too damn dangerous you
don’t want fights to break out you don’t
want anything to disturb the the
relative peace you know and if you’re
also more prone to being hurt physically
and perhaps emotionally you also may be
loath to engage in the kind of
high-intensity conflict that will solve
problems in the short term because a lot
of conflict it takes a lot of conflict
to solve problems in the short term and
you know if that can spiral up to where
it’s dangerous which it can if it gets
uncontrolled it might be safer in the
short term to keep the water smooth and
to not delve into those situations where
conflict emerges the problem with that
is it’s not a very good medium to long
term strategy right because lots lots of
times there are things you have to talk
about because they’re not gonna go away
and so partly what you do with agreeable
people is you get them to figure out and
they have a hard time with this too if
you ask a disagreeable person what what
he wants say or she wants they’ll tell
you right away they know it’s like this
is what I want and this is aren’t going
to get it but agreeable people
especially if they’re really agreeable
are so agreeable that they often don’t
even know what they want because they’re
so accustomed to living for other people
and to finding out what other people
want and to trying to make them
comfortable and so forth that it’s
harder for them to find a sense of their
own desires as they move through life
and that’s not look there’s situations
where that’s advantageous but it’s
certainly not advantageous if you’re
going to try to forge yourself a career that just doesn’t work at all so
women well how do they differ well the
first thing we might observe is that if
you look at personality differences
between prepubescent boys and girls
they’re not very large boys and girls
don’t differ in terms of their their
trait neuroticism for example what
happens is that when puberty kicks in
women’s trait neuroticism Rises and it
stays higher than men for the rest of
their life and this is why you see this
reflected in the different kinds of
psychopathology that beset the two sexes
so men are over-represented in
alcoholism drug abuse antisocial
personality and a host of learning
disorders as well as that attention
deficit disorder and women are
over-represented in depression and
anxiety primarily that seems to be
tightly associated with higher levels of
trait neuroticism because maybe it’s if
you’re at the 95th percentile or higher
let’s say in trait neuroticism there
isn’t much different than difference
between that and being somewhat prone to
depression and anxiety and because the
curves overlap you know the curves
aren’t identical the normal
distributions are identical for men and
women you tilt the one to the to the
right to the women’s curve to the right
towards higher levels of neuroticism you
go out you look for the person in twenty
who has the highest levels of negative
emotion it’s much more likely to be
female than male okay so let’s see if we
can figure out why so we’re gonna tell
you some things basic differences
between men and women and you can tell
me what you think about it if you if you
agree or disagree
okay first size differential emerges
between men and women at puberty right
because boys and girls are roughly the
same size and roughly the same strength
but men get bigger at puberty when the
testosterone kicks in and more
importantly not only do they get taller
and heavier but their upper body
strength is much higher and that’s a
real issue for for combat because human
beings punch there’s other animals that
do that kangaroos do that too way so
we’re not we’re not the only people that
punch but we have clubs on the ends of
our arms and so that’s how we defend
ourselves and so if you have a lot of
upper body strength especially you show
across the shoulders and you’re heavier
then you can step into the punch and
it’s a lot more devastating now it is
the case that if you look at the
statistics for physical altercations in
marriage women attack their husbands
more often
the husband’s attack their wives well
you think why is that well let’s assume
that there isn’t any reason other than
both people in a relationship can get
upset and the women know that if they
hit their husbands nothing’s really
going to happen right because if you’re
a real woman about that high and your
husband is say my height your unless you
hit me with an object or something that
sharp the probability that you’re gonna
do me any serious damage is pretty low
you might hurt me but if I do the
reverse and hit you and I really hit you
and so the reason at least one of the
reasons why women can be more physically
aggressive in minor ways in a
relationship is because everyone knows
the wife and the husband equally that
the consequence of the physical
aggression is much more limited so men
do more serious damage to women but
women are more aggressive in
relationships so that’s interesting so
okay so there’s a boy there’s a body
size difference that’s important to
strength differential that’s important
next thing I think so let’s assume that
the reason that women are higher in
sensitivity to negative emotion is
because the world is actually more
dangerous to women right because that
would be the most logical reason why
there would be a sex difference in a sex
difference in it something like fear or
sensitivity to punishment well first
there’s the danger of physical
altercation second there’s the sexual
danger
so women become sexually vulnerable at
puberty and why do I say vulnerable
well it’s straightforward it’s because
the cost of sex for women is way higher
than it is for men or it certainly has
been throughout our evolutionary history
because if a man has an unwanted sexual
encounter well then he walks away and
maybe he’s persecuted by the state or
prosecuted by the state for it but if a
woman has an unwanted unwarranted or
incautious sexual encounter and she ends
up pregnant then well in traditional
societies that’s you’re just done and
even in modern societies that are rich
like ours you’re it’s it’s a I don’t
have to go into that it’s big trouble no
matter what you do about it it’s big
trouble so being being more nervous
about that makes perfect sense but then
here’s the last thing and I think that
woman’s nervous systems are not adapted
to women I think woman’s nervous system
are adapted to the mother-infant dyad
because you are not the same creature
when you have an infant not at all
you’re way more vulnerable and it’s
partly because you have to express their
vulnerability of the infant and you also
have to care for it right so you think
about an infant especially under nine
months so let’s say how are you going to
be wired up if you’re going to optimally
care for an infant under nine months and
I’m saying under nine months because
women generally do the bulk of child
care for infants who are under nine
months old
and part of the reason for that there’s
a whole host of reasons but part of the
reasons for that obviously is that they
breastfeed but imagine what you need to
be wired up biologically in order to
care for an infant first of all they’re
very demanding right because they’re
completely helpless and they’re
demanding 24 hours a day and it’s quite
it’s quite it’s quite an emotional load
and an infant under nine months is never
wrong right
what you do to an infinite or nine
months is when they’re in distress you
always respond you never tell the infant
get your act together and stop whining
right which you can do say to an into a
child that’s 18 months old you can start
having that sort of conversation but
under nine months it’s like nothing is
the infant’s fault it’s surrounded in an
extraordinarily threatening world and
you have to be responsive to what it
needs regardless of what you want and
you have to be very sensitive to the
threats that emerge in the environment
and so I think the price that women pay
for that ability to have an intimate
relationship with infants in the very
earliest stages of development is that
their nervous systems are actually wired
so that they can perform that role
optimally and the disadvantage to that
is that having a temperament like that
doesn’t work that well when you’re
dealing with adult man especially when
you’re dealing with them in a business
environment because it’s not the same
thing not at all it’s a competitive
environment so ok so agreeable people
are compassionate and polite what are
disagreeable people like they’re tough
minded they’re blunt
they’re competitive and they won’t do a
damn thing they don’t want to do so it
isn’t exactly that they’re aggressive
although they will push you the hell out
of their way if you’re in the way
they’re not they’re not like volatile
like you are if you’re high in in in
eroticism it isn’t defensive aggression
it’s more like predatory aggression its
dominance behavior and so for someone
who’s hyah
who’s high highly disagreeable they look
at the world as a place in which they
can compete and win and I’ll tell you a
story I have a friend I gave him my
personality test the big five aspect
scale that Colin DeYoung developed huh
in my lab and I knew he is a
disagreeable guy and by interacting with
I mean he’s even rude to people sort of
spontaneously on the street I actually
like him quite a bit he’s very very
funny he’s also very conscientious so
you can trust him but it’s disagreeable
as hell and so I gave him this test
because I thought it would be funny and
he came out as the most disagreeable
person in 10,000 so reasonably
reasonable in compassion about 30th
percentile but like Oh point zero zero
one in politeness so he’s
extraordinarily blunt and he’ll just say
absolutely anything no matter how
horrible it is and he was often brought
in to corporations to sort of clean them
up so if a corporation was tilting and
not doing well they’d bring him in to
find out who the useless people were and
fire them and I talked to him about that
because I’ve had the missed opportunity
to have to not have graduate students in
my lab for example that weren’t
performing well and I’d find it very
very difficult to you know dress someone
down and certainly difficult to fire
them I just hate it because I’m actually
quite an agreeable person much to my
chagrin and I asked him about that and I
said well what do you do you have to
fire people all the time how do you
handle that he says handle it I enjoy it
and I thought wow that’s so interesting
that someone would have that response I
said well what do you mean you enjoy it
he said look I go into these companies
and I analyze the performance of groups
of people right and there is in those
groups there are people who are really
striving really trying hard and working
themselves really hard and being
productive and then there’s these people
that are just doing nothing they’re
completely in the way they don’t carry
their weight at all they take advantage
every chance they get and they’re always
whining about why they can’t work it’s
like I find out who they are I call them
into my office and I tell them exactly
what they’ve been doing it’s like hit
the road buddy you’ve had your you’ve
had your run of it and I thought oh yeah
okay fair enough you know well I can
tell you you know I’ve had situations in
my lab where I had
performing graduate students and one of
the things that was really awful about
that was that it was really hard on the
high performing graduate students you
know because they felt that even being
in the same category as the people who
weren’t working hard and pulling their
weight devalued what they were doing you
know and that’s exactly right and so
this is also why there’s there’s a
conscientiousness trait and it
agreeableness trade because
conscientious people judge you on your
accomplishments right they don’t give a
damn about your feelings not a bit it’s
like are you doing the work or not
whereas agreeable people think well you
know your mother’s sick and you know
you’ve you’ve got a bunch of family
problems and and we all have to take
care of each other and it’s no wonder
that you’re having a rough time and like
you can’t say that one of those
attitudes is correct and the other isn’t
correct you can’t say that there
wouldn’t be those two dimensions if
there wasn’t something correct about
both of them but you can certainly point
out that often they conflict you know
and so the demand for for inclusiveness
and unity and care and the demand for
high level performance in a hierarchical
structure there are very different
orientations in the world and so it’s
complicated for people who are agreeable
and conscientious and actually I think
often that large corporations and large
large institutions of any sort run on
the unheralded labor of people who are
high in agreeable lists and high in
conscientiousness and they’re
disproportionately women and my
experience in large institutions has
been that if you want to hire someone to
exploit appropriately no not
appropriately if you want to hire
someone to exploit productively you hire
middle-aged women who are hyper
conscientious and who are agreeable
because they’ll do everything they won’t
take credit for it and they won’t
complain and that’s nasty and I think
that happens all the time and so one of
the things you have to be careful of if
you’re agreeable is not to be exploited
because you’ll line up to be exploited
and I think the reason for that is
because you’re wired to be exploited by
infants and so that just doesn’t work so
well in that actual world and one of the
things one of the things that happens
very often in psychotherapy you know
people come to psychotherapy for
multiple reasons but one of them is they
often come because they’re too agreeable
and so what they get is
so-called assertiveness training
although it’s not exactly assertiveness
that’s being trained what it is is the
ability to learn how to negotiate on
your own behalf and one of the things I
tell agreeable people especially if
their conscientious is say what you
think tell the truth about what you
think there’s gonna be things you think
that you think are nasty and harsh and
they probably are nasty and harsh but
they’re also probably true and you need
to bring those up to the forefront and
deliver the message and it’s not
straightforward at all because agreeable
people do not like conflict
not at all they smooth the water you
know and you can see you can see why
that is in accordance with the
hypothesis that I’ve been putting
forward you don’t want conflict around
infants it’s too damn dangerous you
don’t want fights to break out you don’t
want anything to disturb the the
relative peace you know and if you’re
also more prone to being hurt physically
and perhaps emotionally you also may be
loath to engage in the kind of
high-intensity conflict that will solve
problems in the short term because a lot
of conflict it takes a lot of conflict
to solve problems in the short term and
you know if that can spiral up to where
it’s dangerous which it can if it gets
uncontrolled it might be safer in the
short term to keep the water smooth and
to not delve into those situations where
conflict emerges the problem with that
is it’s not a very good medium to long
term strategy right because lots lots of
times there are things you have to talk
about because they’re not gonna go away
and so partly what you do with agreeable
people is you get them to figure out and
they have a hard time with this too if
you ask a disagreeable person what what
he wants say or she wants they’ll tell
you right away they know it’s like this
is what I want and this is aren’t going
to get it but agreeable people
especially if they’re really agreeable
are so agreeable that they often don’t
even know what they want because they’re
so accustomed to living for other people
and to finding out what other people
want and to trying to make them
comfortable and so forth that it’s
harder for them to find a sense of their
own desires as they move through life
and that’s not look there’s situations
where that’s advantageous but it’s
certainly not advantageous if you’re
going to try to forge yourself a career that just doesn’t work at all so
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