Understanding the Magnitude of Psychological Differences Between Women and Men Requires Seeing the Forest and the Trees.

ABSTRACT: Whether women and men are psychologically very similar or quite different is a contentious issue in psychological science. This article clarifies this issue by demonstrating that larger and smaller sex/gender differences can reflect differing ways of organizing the same data. For single psychological constructs, larger differences emerge from averaging multiple indicators that differ by sex/gender to produce scales of a construct's overall typicality for women versus men. For example, averaging self-ratings on personality traits more typical of women or men yields much larger sex/gender differences on measures of the femininity and masculinity of personality. Sex/gender differences on such broad-gauge, thematic variables are large relative to differences on their component indicators. This

SUBMITTER: Eagly AH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9442632 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature