Theme: Science

(FB 1544284615 Timestamp) ABSTRACTS ON GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY Gender Differences in Personality across the Ten Aspects of the Big Five https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample. —“Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.”— https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21171787/ Gender Differences in Personality across the Ten Aspects of the Big Five –“This paper investigates gender differences in personality traits, both at the level of the Big Five and at the sublevel of two aspects within each Big Five domain. Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men. However, more extensive gender differences were found at the level of the aspects, with significant gender differences appearing in both aspects of every Big Five trait. For Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness, the gender differences were found to diverge at the aspect level, rendering them either small or undetectable at the Big Five level. These findings clarify the nature of gender differences in personality and highlight the utility of measuring personality at the aspect level.”— https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Costa Jr., Paul T.,Terracciano, Antonio,McCrae, Robert R. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 81(2), Aug 2001, 322-331 —“Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality inventory data from 26 cultures (N =23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)”— Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. DeYoung, Colin G.,Quilty, Lena C.,Peterson, Jordan B. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 93(5), Nov 2007, 880-896 –“Factor analyses of 75 facet scales from 2 major Big Five inventories, in the Eugene-Springfield community sample (N=481), produced a 2-factor solution for the 15 facets in each domain. These findings indicate the existence of 2 distinct (but correlated) aspects within each of the Big Five, representing an intermediate level of personality structure between facets and domains. The authors characterized these factors in detail at the item level by correlating factor scores with the International Personality Item Pool (L. R. Goldberg, 1999). These correlations allowed the construction of a 100-item measure of the 10 factors (the Big Five Aspect Scales [BFAS]), which was validated in a 2nd sample (N=480). Finally, the authors examined the correlations of the 10 factors with scores derived from 10 genetic factors that a previous study identified underlying the shared variance among the Revised NEO Personality Inventory facets (K. L. Jang et al., 2002). The correspondence was strong enough to suggest that the 10 aspects of the Big Five may have distinct biological substrates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)”— http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.93.5.880 Why can’t a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures. —“Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development–including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth–were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men’s personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.”— PMID: 18179326 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.168 Higher-order factors of the Big Five in a multi-informant sample. DeYoung, Colin G. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 91(6), Dec 2006, 1138-1151 —“In a large community sample (N=490), the Big Five were not orthogonal when modeled as latent variables representing the shared variance of reports from 4 different informants. Additionally, the standard higher-order factor structure was present in latent space: Neuroticism (reversed), Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness formed one factor, labeled Stability, and Extraversion and Openness/Intellect formed a second factor, labeled Plasticity. Comparison of two instruments, the Big Five Inventory and the Mini-Markers, supported the hypotheses that single-adjective rating instruments are likely to yield lower interrater agreement than phrase rating instruments and that lower interrater agreement is associated with weaker correlations among the Big Five and a less coherent higher-order factor structure. In conclusion, an interpretation of the higher-order factors is discussed, including possible neurobiological substrates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)”— Personality and compatibility: a prospective analysis of marital stability and marital satisfaction. Kelly EL, Conley JJ. —The antecedents of marital stability (divorce or remaining married) and marital satisfaction (within the group that remains married) were investigated with a panel of 300 couples who were followed from their engagements in the 1930s until 1980. Twenty-two of the couples broke their engagements; of the 278 couples who married, 50 got divorced at some time between 1935 and 1980. Personality characteristics (measured by acquaintance ratings made in the 1930s) were important predictors of both marital stability and marital satisfaction. The three aspects of personality most strongly related to marital outcome were the neuroticism of the husband, the neuroticism of the wife, and the impulse control of the husband. In combination, the 17 major antecedent variables were moderately predictive of a criterion variable composed of both marital stability and marital satisfaction (R = .49). The three major aspects of personality accounted for more than half of the predictable variance. The remaining variance was accounted for by attitudinal, social-environment, and sexual history variables.”— Parental investment, sexual selection and sex ratios HANNA KOKKO MICHAEL D. JENNIONS First published: 06 May 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01540.x Cited by: 392 Hanna Kokko, Laboratory of Ecological and Evolutionary Dynamics, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Helsinki, PO Box 65, Viikinkaari 1, FIN–00014, Helsinki, Finland. Tel.: +358 9 1915 7702; fax: +358 9 1915 7694; e‐mail: hanna.kokko@helsinki.fi —“Conventional sex roles imply caring females and competitive males. The evolution of sex role divergence is widely attributed to anisogamy initiating a self‐reinforcing process. The initial asymmetry in pre‐mating parental investment (eggs vs. sperm) is assumed to promote even greater divergence in post‐mating parental investment (parental care). But do we really understand the process? Trivers [Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man 1871–1971 (1972), Aldine Press, Chicago] introduced two arguments with a female and male perspective on whether to care for offspring that try to link pre‐mating and post‐mating investment. Here we review their merits and subsequent theoretical developments. The first argument is that females are more committed than males to providing care because they stand to lose a greater initial investment. This, however, commits the ‘Concorde Fallacy’ as optimal decisions should depend on future pay‐offs not past costs. Although the argument can be rephrased in terms of residual reproductive value when past investment affects future pay‐offs, it remains weak. The factors likely to change future pay‐offs seem to work against females providing more care than males. The second argument takes the reasonable premise that anisogamy produces a male‐biased operational sex ratio (OSR) leading to males competing for mates. Male care is then predicted to be less likely to evolve as it consumes resources that could otherwise be used to increase competitiveness. However, given each offspring has precisely two genetic parents (the Fisher condition), a biased OSR generates frequency‐dependent selection, analogous to Fisherian sex ratio selection, that favours increased parental investment by whichever sex faces more intense competition. Sex role divergence is therefore still an evolutionary conundrum. Here we review some possible solutions. Factors that promote conventional sex roles are sexual selection on males (but non‐random variance in male mating success must be high to override the Fisher condition), loss of paternity because of female multiple mating or group spawning and patterns of mortality that generate female‐biased adult sex ratios (ASR). We present an integrative model that shows how these factors interact to generate sex roles. We emphasize the need to distinguish between the ASR and the operational sex ratio (OSR). If mortality is higher when caring than competing this diminishes the likelihood of sex role divergence because this strongly limits the mating success of the earlier deserting sex. We illustrate this in a model where a change in relative mortality rates while caring and competing generates a shift from a mammalian type breeding system (female‐only care, male‐biased OSR and female‐biased ASR) to an avian type system (biparental care and a male‐biased OSR and ASR).”—