Chick - Understanding differences

Men & Women: differences

2006-11-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard a seemingly normal woman saying something like, "I don't know what I do to turn men off. I seem to push them away. Maybe I'm too demanding, or not demanding enough. Men are so confusing."

And it could be that very same day that you hear a seemingly normal man, unrelated to the first woman, complaining: ‘I don't get women. I must be doing something wrong. Women are so hard to understand."

When men and women get together, there are, in effect, two worlds—his and hers. They have different values, priorities, and habits. They play by different rules.

Scientists have come to accept that a few fundamental differences between men and women are biological. It turns out that men's and women's brains, for example, are not only different, but the way we use them differs too. Women have larger connections and more frequent interaction between their brain's left and right hemispheres. This accounts for women's ability to have better verbal skills and intuition. Men, on the other hand, have greater brain hemisphere separation, which explains their skills for abstract reasoning and visual-spatial intelligence. Poet Robert Bly describes women's brains as a "superhighway" of connection while men’s brains connections are compared to a "little crookedy country road.'"

Different habits of men and women are explained by different roles in the process of evolution. Although life conditions have changed, both men and women tend to follow their biological programs.

Men tend to retain a firm sense of direction – they need to trace the game, catch it, and find the way home, while women have a better peripheral vision that helps them to see what’s happening around the house, to spot an approaching danger, to notice changes in the children’s behavior and appearance. Men’s brains are programmed to hunting, which explains their narrow range of vision, while women’s brains are able to decipher a wider range of information

When entering a room, men look for exits, estimating a possible threat, and ways of escape, while women pay attention to the guests’ faces to find out who they are and how they feel. Men are able to sort out information and archive it in their head. Women tend to ‘rewind’ the information over and over again. The only way to stop thinking of the problems is to talk it over. When a woman shares her problems with a man, she is not looking for solutions – she needs someone to listen to her.

Men prefer strident noises, hard handshakes, and red color. They are better at solving technical problems. Women have a sharper ear, they use more words while talking, and are better at completing tasks independently.

Based on these biologically explained differences, some psychological distinctions between men and women can be established:

- Men grasp a situation as a whole and think globally, while women think locally, relying on details and nuances.

- Men are builders and creators. They take risks and experiment, while women select the most valuable knowledge and pass it over to the next generation.

- Men are more independent in their thoughts and actions, while women are more willing to follow the ideas suggested by others.

- Women’s self-appraisal is lower than that of men. Women tend to criticize themselves, while men are more satisfied with their own performance.

- Men and women have different sources of satisfaction. For men it’s career and prosperity, while women value family and kids.

- Men have a pronounced need to fulfill their goals, and women rank relationships with others first.

- Men get sick twice as often as women, although women tend to be more concerned about their health.

- Women endure pain and monotonous work better than men.

All the above gets even more confusing, if we take into account that 15 to 20% of men happen to have a female type of brains, and about 10% of women have a male type of brains, which means that some percentage of men and women, no matter how small it seems, are partially programmed to the behavior and way of thinking of the opposite gender.

"Okay, I understand the problem", you are saying to yourself, but -"what's the solution"? That depends on whether you are a woman or a man.

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The mismeasure of woman

2006-11-24T08:23:00.000-08:00

Men and women think differently. But not that differently

Just behave

Differences in behaviour between the sexes must, in some way, be reflections of systematic differences between the brains of males and females. Such differences certainly exist, but drawing inferences from them is not as easy as it may appear.

For a start, men's brains are about 9% larger than those of women. That used to be cited as evidence of men's supposedly greater intelligence. Actually, the difference is largely (and probably completely) explained by the fact that men are bigger than women.

In recent years, more detailed examination has refined the picture. Female brains have a higher percentage of grey matter (the manifestation, en bloc, of the central bodies of nerve cells), and thus a lower percentage of white matter (the manifestation of the long, thin filaments that connect nerve cells together), than male brains. That, plus the fact that in some regions of the female brain, nerve cells are packed more densely than in men, means that the number of nerve cells in male and female brains may be similar.

Oddly, though, the main connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, which is known as the corpus callosum and is made of white matter, is proportionately smaller in men than women. This may explain why men use only one side of the brain to process some problems for which women employ both sides.

Read the rest of this article.

Femme Mentale

2006-11-24T06:56:00.000-08:00

San Francisco neuropsychiatrist says differences between women’s and men’s brains are very real, and the sooner we all understand it, the better.

Women have come a long way toward equality over the past 50 years, but the Yale-trained Brizendine, 53, says her research indicates that human brains are still wired for Stone Age necessities.

Male and female brains are different in architecture and chemical composition, asserts Brizendine. The sooner women — and those who love them — accept and appreciate how those neurological differences shape female behavior, the better we can all get along.

“Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road,” she writes. Men, however, “have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.”

A man’s brain may be bigger overall, she writes, but the main hub for emotion and memory formation is larger in a woman’s brain, as is the wiring for language and “observing emotion in others.” Also, a woman’s “neurological reality” is much more deeply affected by hormonal surges that fluctuate throughout her life.

Brizendine uses those differences to explain everything from why teenage girls feverishly swap text messages during class, to why women fake orgasms to why menopausal women leave their husbands.

“There is no unisex brain,” Brizendine writes. “Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they’re born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values and their very reality.”

Brizendine’s book offers a 2 1/2-page appendix on the female brain and sexual orientation, but she doesn’t mention transgender folks. Sexual orientation, she writes, “does not appear to be a matter of conscious self-labeling but a matter of brain wiring.” All women are wired for a sexual orientation during fetal development, and “the behavioral expression of her brain wiring will then be influenced and shaped by environment and culture.”

That’s not to say either sex is more intelligent. Just different, Brizendine said. Nor do she or other scientists who study the brain, like Bruce S. McEwen, a Rockefeller (N.Y.) University brain researcher, dismiss the role that parenting and environment and experience play in shaping a person.

“The basic idea is that men and women approach the same problems in somewhat different ways, at least in part because of the biological differences in the brain, which in turn interact with experience — the nature-nurture story,” said McEwen.

“This does not imply whether either sex is superior … but it does provide the basis for such cultural sayings as ‘Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.’ “

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What Women Want.

2006-11-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

For years the great minds of the world have been trying to find an answer to a very complex question. It seems that no man, no matter what his intellect, can crack the case of this intensely scrutinized predicament. What is it that has Nobel peace prize winners and the great scholars of our world in frenzy? —What do women want? Although you may read the haphazard articles in magazines that talk about strategies and games that will win women over, it is important to consider the evolutionary theory and the qualities that this theory suggests women look for in their mate.

Evolutionary psychology offers one view about female psychology. Not all psychologists agree that this theory offers a complete explanation of “what women want”, but some find the logic attractive.

Selectivity

A man’s contribution to reproduction is fairly small (only a few healthy sperm), while a woman’s investment is much larger and involves a tremendous amount of time and effort. Therefore, a woman is more interested in what the man can provide post-sex, like food and shelter, to ensure the survival of their child. According to evolutionary psychologists, this should lead the woman to be highly selective in choosing her partner. Since women risk an enormous investment as a consequence of having sex, evolution should favor women who are highly selective in choosing their mates. If a woman was not highly discriminate about who her mate would be, the result could be unhealthy children who did not survive to reproductive age.

Obviously times have changed with the introduction of highly effective birth control methods, such as the pill and the condom. This advancement has given women in developed countries more freedom to experiment sexually without high fear of pregnancy. However, even today most women are still cautious about their mates, fearing that a rendezvous might result in long term consequences such as conception, or sexually transmitted diseases.

So maybe selectivity is not a brand new idea and men have known for centuries how ‘picky’ women can be. What can men do to ensure they are the ones a woman will choose them?

Generosity

All things being equal, would a woman choose a stingy man over a generous man? It may seem like a simple answer, but it is important to consider. A generous man who is willing to sacrifice his time, energy and resources is likely to benefit the woman, her offspring and contribute to the woman’s future fertility. A happy, healthy woman is more likely to have happy healthy children to grow up and be fruitful until reproductive age.
In the real world, all things are rarely equal. With all of the thousands of differences among men, why do women value some characteristics more than others? Why is generosity more important that a cleft chin? Why do women not ask to see a man’s toes before their first date? Some attributes are granted more weight than others, and one of the most scrutinized attributes are a man’s resources and social status.

Resources

The evolution of the female preference for males who offer resources may be the most ancient and pervasive basis for female choice in the animal kingdom. During avian mating season, the male gray shrike of Israel displays all of the items he has amassed throughout the summer months and impales them on thorns. The female shrikes then fly around and choose their mates depending on the amount of resources they have. Male Shrikes with no resources are destined for bachelorhood. According to evolutionary psychologists, humans do not fall far from this animalistic ritual. In our society, the amenities a man can provide for his mate are important in a woman’s decision to choose or not choose him. If the man is unable to provide for her and her offspring, then the woman will seek elsewhere for these resources. In fact, in a cross-cultural survey study of women, it has been found that women place more value than men on financial resources.

Social Status

In traditional hunter-gatherer societies, social hierarchies were common. The men at the top of the hierarchy would have access to most of the resources, while the men at the bottom had less. For this reason, many women would seek the men at the top. This still rings true in today’s society. Henry Kissinger once remarked that power is the most potent aphrodisiac. In a study conducted on American college-aged men and women in Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas and California, social status was ranked between important and indispensable for women, whereas men rate it as desirable but not very important. When looking for a mate, women place great value on education and professional degrees, which are both strong indicators of future social status. As the roles of men and women have changed through evolution, the value women place on social status may be changing accordingly. But again, it is difficult to dismiss millions of years of evolution of the female psyche and consider only the modern woman. For this reason, women may continue to value social status highly when choosing a partner.
Perhaps the most abstract quality a woman looks for in a man regards love and commitment. A man can have all of the resources in the world, but if he does not choose to give his potential mate love and commitment, many women will go in search of another mate.

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When does the female brain outperfrom the male brain?

2006-11-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

Anytime a scientist suggests there are biologic brain differences between races, or between male and female- that go beyond social circumstance- there’s bound to be tons of publicity and controversy.

Louann Brizendine, MD- a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco- recently published a book called The Female Brain that contends there are indeed inborn biologic differences between male and female brain architecture. Some of these differences include:
women tend to have faster and better fine-motor skills than men
women tend to have faster and broader verbal skills
women tend to have higher emotional IQs:
In a recent interview, she notes: “Women have these extra “antenna” almost sticking out the sides of their cheeks and ears for emotional details and emotional nuance, and their brains are always feeling for emotional information at a level that men can’t even perceive. Therefore, things she may think are very important, he misses completely”
“Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road,” she writes.

“Although we were taught that sex differences mostly came from how your parents raised you as a boy or girl — we now know that’s not completely true,” she writes. “There is no unisex brain. Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys.”

Although this line of thinking tends to be politcaly incorrect, to me it seems fairly obvious. As my organic chemistry teacher used to repeat over and over again: “Structure determines function”. The brain is just another structure of the body, and it is obvious that males and females tend to have body parts that both look and function differently.

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Gender and Communication.

2006-11-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

In the interesting, well-researched book Brain Sex (1991), geneticist Anne Moir and co-author David Jessel say that the development of a person’s brain and certain glands are mainly programmed early in pregnancy by the presence or absence of male sex hormones - specially testosterone.

All embryo brains start out wired “female” (!) Moir claims that social programming is an important but much weaker factor in determining whether a person has “male” or “female” traits and response patterns. Male and female brains are structured and process information differently. Adults’ and kids’ brains are on a continuum from “very male” to “very female,” and function largely independently of the gender of the body they’re in (Hence “tom-boys” and “sissies”).

Because of this, Dr. Moir urges that we stop the “battle of the sexes” - for neither is right or better, we’re just “wired” differently. Thus in communicating, it would help if men and women stop judging and trying to convert each other (”You are so illogical!; Yeah? Well you have the sensitivity of a tree stump.”), accept our different abilities and skills as complementary, and blend them cooperatively to manage our life challenges! This seems to answer Henry Higgins’ question in My Fair Lady “Why Can’t A Woman … Be More Like A Man?!”

Some of these innate, largely biological differences seem to be:

High-Testosterone People
(”Male brains”) prefer:

_ things

_ facts, reason, and logic

_ power / rank / status

_ competing / achieving

_ winning

_ teams

_ analyzing / figuring out

_ assertion / aggression

_ reports / information

_ intellectual understanding

_ sex (intercourse / orgasm)

_ companionship / doing

_ teaching / leading

_ being focused / specific / “logical”

_ order / rules / structure

_ thinking

_ how things work

Low-Testosterone People
(”Female brains”) prefer:

_ people

_ feelings, senses, and meaning

_ relationships

_ harmony / relating

_ sharing

_ groups

_ intuiting / “knowing”

_ co-operation, mutuality

_ rapports / bonding

_ empathizing

_ love / intimacy

_ closeness / being

_ nurturing / growing

_ being “wide-angle” / organic / wholistic

_ organic, fluid patterns

_ feeling / experiencing

_ personal and social impacts

A key implication here is - if your partner has a different profile of these priorities than you do, it’s useless and disrespectful to criticize or try to change them. Attempting to do so is like demanding that s/he change her or his fingerprints. What do you think?

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