What is the difference in

Humans
Messinger

Gender film clips

Bonobo
Overview
Biology's role
 “Experiments with nonhuman primates
show that administering testosterone to
female fetuses late in gestation yields
more typically masculine behavior.”
 Placement of rat fetuses in utero
influences sex-typed behavior
 Many sex differences are continuous, not
categorical
 E.g. estrogen and testosterone
Sex Differences in Early
Infancy
 “girls show stronger visual
preferences for a doll (i.e., an object
with human attributes) than for a toy
truck
• (Alexander, Wilcox, & Woods, 2009)…

 boys shortly after birth show stronger

visual preferences for a mechanical
mobile than for a face
• (Connellan et al., 2000)”

Alexander, G. M., & Wilcox, T. (2012). Sex Differences in Early

Infancy. Child Development Perspectives, 6(4), 400-406. doi:
10.1111/j.1750-8606.2012.00247.x
Feedback
 Between physical and social features
 Simpson, Nicolini, Shetler, Suomi, Ferrari,&
Paukner (2016)

Experience-independent sex
differences in newborn macaques:
Females are more social than
males

Background

 Gender differences may be attributed to different evolutionary

pressures
 Females – primary caretakers
 increased social interests & skills interpreting expressions 
increased offspring survival
 However, male and female human infants are treated differently
from birth
 Parents handle male infants more “rough” & spend more time in
synchronous interactions with mothers
 Offer female infants more verbal stimulation & get more parent-child
interaction overall

Current Study

 Nonhuman Primate Studies

 More control over experiences and environments
 Macaques have similar patterns in sex-related differences

 Goal: assess sex differences in macaque infants raised in

homogenous controlled environments (nursery)
 

Methods

 48 healthy, full term macaques

(21 Female)
 Separated from mothers at birth

 Tested before exposed to social

groups

 Eye tracking test at 2-3 weeks

old

 Human interaction task at 4-5

weeks old
 

Eye Tracking Task

 Across both measures there are main

effects of sex
 Females look at faces longer regardless of
expression than their male counterparts

 Females also specifically spend more time

looking to the eyes and mouths of the face
 

Human Interaction Task

 Sex differences only in Affiliative

Social Behaviors

 Females significantly outperformed

the males
 
Take-homes

 First study to provide evidence for “experience-independent” sex differences

in social behaviors soon after birth in any primate (humans included)
 Limitations:
 No control stimuli
 Possible subtle differences in the way caregivers treated infants
 Disentangle social skills & social motivation

 Questions?
 How do you feel about the procedures in both eye tracking task and human
interaction task?
 Do you expect similar results if we could do this with human infants?
 Pre-natal environment differences?
 Did you buy it?
Male newborns
 ‘Less responsive to social stimuli
 less able to maintain eye contact
 Greater difficulties in maintaining
affective regulation
 Smile less and display more irritability,
crying, facial grimacing, and lability of
emotional states
 more rapid buildup of arousal
 engage in less self-comforting’
• Weinberg et al., p. 175
Face-to-face
Boys Girls
Joy .26 .16
Interest .55 .68
Anger .07 .03
Look @ Mom .42 .35
Look @ Object .35 .45
Neutral/Positive .13 .06
Vocalizations
Fussy Vocalizations .09 .04
(Weinberg et al.)
Mothers more likely to
 talk to
 engage in face-to-face interaction
 hold and touch
 their male infants
 possibly in an attempt to soothe them
Differential social
expectations
 Pervasive: TV, media
 Experimentally demonstrated
 Define normative expectations of
everyday behavior and
 Define boundaries of acceptable
behavior
 At the most intimate and the most
mundane levels
Maccoby
 "By and large, the daily routines of
family life do not have much impact
on the strong tendency of children
to separate into same-sex groups,
and probably not on the distinctive
activities enacted by male and
female groups," Maccoby said.
Gender segregation
 Research on gender typing in
individuals is inconclusive
 Clustering of gender-typed
characteristics weak
 Relations to family characteristics weak

 Same-sex groupings predominate

 From 3 – 12,
 Cross-cultural phenomenon
Constructivist argument
 Innate gender-specific proclivities
 Lead to same sex segregation
 Which creates gender-specific
socialization
 Children create themselves playing
with each other
 IS THIS POSSIBLE?
Same-sex groupings
 Boys  Girls
 Larger groups
 Smaller, more
 More
dyadic
conflict/competition
 Cohesiveness
 Less conflict, more
responsive
 More autonomous
from adults
 Less goal-oriented,
more intimate

Differentialexposure to these groups

influences individual behavior
Sex differences
 With increasing age, boys and girls in
preschool interact with members of
the same sex
• (e.g., Fabes, Shepard, Guthrie, & Martin, 1997; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987; Martin & Fabes, 2001).

 By 4-5 years of age, both boys and

girls are observed interacting with
same sex peers at three to four times
the frequency that they interact with
other sex peers.
 Day-to-day variability
Girls Boys

Same-sex
preference

Other-sex
preference
Dynamic system approach
to gender research
 Long term changes and short term
interactions.

Lynn Martin, C., Fabes, R. A.,

Hanish, L. D., & Hollenstein, T.
(2005). Social dynamics in the
preschool. Developmental
Review, 25(3–4), 299-327. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.20
05.10.001
“Fig. 4A represents the state space
pattern that might be seen for a socially
competent boy who is solely attracted to
other socially competent children. “

“Fig. 4B illustrates a pattern based on sex

similarity. In this case, the events
represented on this boy’s state space
illustrate that he is seen interacting only
with boys and it does not matter what
type of social behavior they tend to
display. “
“Fig. 4C depicts the landscape for a
socially competent boy whose state space
is shaped by both similarity on social
behavior and on sex. The events cluster in
the region of socially competent boys. If
this pattern occurred, it would suggest
that behavioral similarity matters but only
in consideration for same-sex peers.”
Sex-Segregated
Interactions
New approaches
Child Mobility.ppt
 Digit Ratio (2D:4D) and
attachment styles in middle
childhood: Indirect evidence for
an organizational effect of sex
hormones
Marco Del Giudice & Romina
Angeleri (2015)
Will
M.
 Life history theory
How to make trade-offs between
growth, maintenance, and
reproduction over the life course
given a limited amount of energy.
“Fast” strategy: mature early, reproduce early,
have many offspring, invest less in them, die
earlier
E.g., Salmon

“Slow” strategy: mature late, reproduce later, have

fewer offspring, invest more in them, die later
E.g., Humans
Will M.
 Does 2D:4D digit ratio predict
attachment in middle childhood?
 Second digit typically shorter, but difference
between lengths of the two digits greater in
males than females.
 Rough-and-ready measure of early exposure to
androgen and estrogen.
 Should predict differences in insecure
attachment in both sexes

Will M.
Mean digit ratio higher in
females
 Females score lower in avoidance, higher
in ambivalence
 No sex differences in secure attachment
 More feminine ratios associated with less
avoidance, more ambivalence, not felt
security
Will
M.
Aggression type and gender
 Boys more physically victimized by their
friends.
 Friend physical victimization was particularly
related to boys adjustment difficulties

 Girls more relationally victimized.

 Friend relational victimization was particularly
related to girls’ adjustment difficulties.
 Crick & Nelson, 2002.
Prediction
Cross-sex friendships
 Pre-school
 Elementary school
 Middle school
 High school / Adolescence …
Change
 12th grade
 Boys 5 hrs a week w girls.
 Girls 10 hrs a week w boys.

 Larger network of other-sex friends

increases odds of romantic
relationship
Extreme male brain
theory of autism
Baron-Cohen
Empathizing
(theory of mind)
 “Empathizing is the
capacity to predict and
to respond to the
behavior of agents
(usually people) by
inferring their mental
states and responding to
these with an
appropriate emotion.”
Systemizing
 “Systemizing is the
capacity to predict and
to respond to the
behavior of nonagentive
deterministic systems by
analyzing input-
operation-output
relations and inferring
the rules that govern
such systems.”
Females and males
 “At population level, females are stronger
empathizers and males stronger systemizers.
 “Eextreme male brain’’ theory: autism represents an
extreme of the male pattern (impaired empathizing
and enhanced systemizing).
 Specific aspects of autistic neuroanatomy may also
be extremes of typical male neuroanatomy.”
You can be high in both… or
low in both
 Higher on graph
– more
empathizing
 Lower – less
empathizing
 More to right –
higher
systemizing
 More left – less
systemizing
AS/HFA>Male>Female
AS/HFA>Male>Female
Sex differences attenuated
in ASD….

Baron-Cohen, S.,
Cassidy, S., Auyeung, B.,
Allison, C., Achoukhi, M.,
Robertson, S., Pohl, A.,
& Lai, M.-C. (2014).
Attenuation of Typical
Sex Differences in 800
Adults with Autism vs.
3,900 Controls. PLoS
ONE, 9(7), e102251. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.01
02251
 What about the development
of ASD?

Messinger, D. S., Young, G. S., Webb, S. J., Ozonoff, S.,

Bryson, S. E., Carter, A., Carver, L., Charman, T.,
Chawarska, K., Curtin, S., Dobkins, K., Hertz-Picciotto, I.,
Hutman, T., Iverson, J. M., Landa, R., Nelson, C. A.,
Stone, W. L., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Zwaigenbaum, L.
(2015). Early sex differences are not autism-specific: A
Baby Siblings Research Consortium (BSRC) study. Mol
Autism, 6, 32. doi: 10.1186/s13229-015-0027-y
Relative risk of ASD = 3.18
Proportion ASD
Sex by domain
not affected by group
Repetitive Behaviors Social Affect
Sex by subtest
not affected by group
Conclusion
 Sex differences in ASD prevalence
 No sex differences in overall symptoms or
cognition
• Boys (higher RRB) and girls (higher language)
with ASD differ in specific performance areas
• These sex differences exist in ASD, non-ASD,
low-risk
 Results are consistent with recent reports
 Sex differences that appear in children
with ASD may not be ASD-specific
Effect of
female
sibling

 Palmer, N., Beam, A., Agniel, D., Eran, A.,

Manrai, A., Spettell, C., . . . Kohane, I.
(2017). Association of Sex With Recurrence
of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among
Siblings. JAMA Pediatr. doi:
10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.2832
Homosexuality as a
Discrete Class
 Previous research on the latent structure of sexual orientation has
returned conflicting results, with some studies finding a dimensional
structure (i.e., ranging quantitatively along a spectrum) and others a
taxonic structure (i.e., categories of individuals with distinct orientations).
 The current study used a sample (N = 33,525) from the National Epidemiologic Survey on
Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). A series of taxometric analyses were conducted
using three indicators of sexual orientation: identity, behavior, and attraction.
 Low-base-rate same-sex-oriented taxa for men (base rate = 3.0%) and
women (base rate = 2.7%).
 Generally, taxon membership conferred an increased risk for psychiatric and substance-use
disorders.
 Although taxa were present for men and women, women demonstrated
greater sexual fluidity, such that any level of same-sex sexuality
conferred taxon membership for men but not for women.
 Norris, A. L., Marcus, D. K., & Green, B. A. (2015). Psychological Science. doi:
10.1177/0956797615598617
Female Bisexuality From Adolescence to Adulthood:
Results From a 10-Year Longitudinal Study. Lisa Diamond

 3 conceptualizations of bisexuality
1. “Transitional phase”
2. Third type of sexual orientation
3. Heightened capacity for fluidity
 Present study
 79 non-heterosexual women
 10 years, 5 assessment points. At each:
• Label self sexual identity
• Lesbian, bisexual, “unlabeled”
• % daily attractions that are same-sex
• #of sexual contacts with men & women
(since last assessment)
Nayfeld
Identity
 Changing identity
Bisexual and unlabeled
• 73% of T1 bisexuals women more likely to
• 83% of T1 “unlabeled” change identity labels,
χ2(2, N = 79) = 8.3, p
• 48% of T1 lesbians < .02.
 More likely to switch between bisexual
and unlabeled IDs than to settle on
lesbian or heterosexual labels.
• 2/3 of ID changes: adopting bisexual or
unlabeled identity.
 % identifying as bisexual or “unlabeled”
• T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
57% 47% 51% 57% 58%
Nayfeld
Sexual
Attractions

•Same-sex attractions
declined significantly
among lesbians only

•Women who gave up

bisexual/lesbian IDs still
reported bisexual patterns
of attraction in T5

Nayfeld
Sexual Behavior
 Consistentdecline in same sex behavior
among all women
 NOT matched by a parallel decline in
same-sex attractions
 By 2005, most women involved in long
term monogamous relationships.
70% of T5 lesbians, 89% of bisexuals, 85% of
unlabeled women, 67% of heterosexuals
 By2005, 60% of T1 lesbians had had
sexual contact with a man, and 30% had
been romantically involved with a man
Resolved by change in identity to
bisexual/unidentified

Nayfeld
Discussion
 Bisexuality as stable pattern of attraction
to both sexes, with balance varying based
on personal and situational factors.
 Identity change more common than
identity stability
 ID change reflects shifting experiences
• Adopt labels consistent with relationship status
• Seek to maximize fit with own prevailing pattern
of attraction/behavior

Nayfeld