Men and Women think differently; Evolutionary Advantages?

[Firedragon52]

It's known that men and women think differently. If I'm correct, men's brains are more "specialized" (Is that the word I'm looking for?), where one hemisphere controls one set of skills and the other hemisphere, another set of skills. Whereas women usually have their skills connected to both ends of the brain. This is the explaination for why women recover faster from a stroke.

 

My question: What are the possible evolutionary benefits from this system? Why don't men and women think alike?

[LucidDreamer]

It is advantageous because allows for job specialization. In an assembly line it is more productive to train each individual in one type of job so that he becomes very good at one thing. It is more productive than trying to train everyone to do every job.

 

Men are physically more powerful so they are naturally more suited to warfare and hunting (at least before the current level of technology). So it is advantageous for the male sex to develop mental skills suited for these jobs. Women bear children and take care of the household. In hunter/gatherer societies, which was only form of society that existed until recent times, the woman gathered nuts, grains, fruits, etc. It was advantageous for early hominid females to develop mental faculties to support this.

 

Of course man's true power is his versatility and adaptability so the differences are slight. Also, you usually find only a limited amount of diversification of the genetic characteristics between sexes within the same species in the animal kingdom.

[aurigus]

You guys are assuming that the difference between the brains of males and females is biological and not caused by upbringing. Determining the difference between "nature vs nurture" is hard in this case because it would take a controlled scientific study, repressing the "gender" of a child (which would probably cause an outcry if a child was used to experiement like this), over 20 years or more.

 

From birth, males and females are treated differently. Have their been studies that show there is an actual biological differeence in the brains of men and women? Besides the hormones of course. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Glider]

Aurigus: There are structural differences between the brains of males and females (e.g. the cortical areas associated with language are larger and more developed in females). Male brains tend to be more lateralized too. These differences are not huge, but they are significant and they do indicate an evolutionary difference rather than the effects of environment.

 

It is unlikely that upbringing could result in significant changes in basic structure given the differences in upbringing between individuals, i.e. the differences between male and female brains are more stable than the differences in environmental history of individuals of each sex. Thus, if the structural differences were due to upbringing, we would expect far more variation.

[SubJunk]

firedragon52, you might find it interesting to read men are from mars, women are from venus. I'm currently reading it for the second time, it's great for those times when you just can't understand why a female (or a male if you're a female) is acting in a certain way.

It doesn't contain information about the biological side of things, so not the cause of the differences, but it does go into detail about what the differences are and how they affect interactions between sexes.

[aurigus]

I don't buy it. I think it is just a hypothesis until there is an experiment that proves the physical brains are different. At birth or after puberty.

 

There is too much of a societal effect on upbringing that could affect which parts of the brain are used more than others and become more developed.

 

Really, males and females are the same until they hit puberty, thats when the physical changes occur. I might buy that the hormones introduced at that time cause the brain to develop differently. But even before then, males and females are trained differently and that could have just the same effect.

 

Does the environment affect the change in brain development, or does the brain development cause the change in environment? That is the big question.

 

I preface all my statements with that I am fairly ignorant about any studies that have been done concerning this as I'm not a neurologist!

[Glider]

It's not an hypothesis. Post mortem studies on the brains of both adults and neonates have shown structural differences between the sexes.

[Firedragon52]

firedragon52, you might find it interesting to read men are from mars, women are from venus.

I have heard of the book, but can't say that I've read it. I might try and check it out.

[Firedragon52]

My main problem is that I don't see the evolutionary advantage for the differences. Why would men need to develop a "lateralized" brain? I would think that the women that developed these skills, who could hunt as well as take of the young, would have an evolutionary advantage, and develop this type of brain as well. What about the man who developed better language skills?

 

Are we to believe that you can have one and not the other?

[LucidDreamer]

From birth' date=' males and females are treated differently. Have their been studies that show there is an actual biological differeence in the brains of men and women? Besides the hormones of course.[/quote']

Hormones make a big difference. Hormones are chemical messengers and it is exactly these chemical messengers that bring about most of the cellular/tissue differentiation of an organism. Sexual hormones like testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, etc can bring about big changes in a developing human.

[YT2095]

My question: What are the possible evolutionary benefits from this system? Why don't men and women think alike?

Possible bennefits may include. Male: ability to focus and not get distracted during a hunt for food (Multi-tasking need not apply).

 

Female: ability to Muti-Task easier to look after a child (+ all the things a child can get up to when not watched) and the home and other things at once.

 

Male: communcation skills are needed for Practical things, a better fishing hole, a place where the best food is, who`as the best hunter (football player), which girl the most "Up for it" or where to get the best price for a share on the stock market

 

Female: more emotional, needs words and explainations that the male doesn`t, in order to share with others about how they "Feel", for companionship and help.

 

 

 

there`s 2 basic examples, based on personal observation, how TRUE they are... I don`t know, but I`m fairly sure it`s not TOO FAR off the mark

[gib65]

I don't see why it would be so hard to believe that there are biological differences to some degree. Afterall, there's clearly biological differences in general, so why not also in the brain. For one thing, I think it's reasonable to assume sexual attraction is hard wired. I guess you could argue that sexual attraction is learnt solely through societal upbringing, but this would require some extremely substantial evidence and it would be pretty astonishing if it turned out to be this way.

 

I think one has to keep in mind a couple things on this subject:

 

1) differences are not a bad thing. The wider the variety in a species, the better off it is in adapting to situations of various kinds. There's absolutely no reasons to cast value judgements along a "good"/"bad" scale when comparing differences between people.

 

2) "Biological" does not mean "unchangeable" nor does it mean "generalizable". If, on average, women are more emotional than men, or men are more aggressive than women, there is absolutely no justification for randomly selecting a man or woman from society at large and saying that he/she is obviously aggressive/emotional simply because of the obvious fact that he/she is male/female. Furthermore, even if said random male/female so happens to fit the average profile, there is no reason to say they are destined to remain that way for the entirety of their lives. Environment can still have an untold effect and free will can still stretch natural predispositions to whatever lengths it has the power to do so with.