
Why Girls Have BFFs and Boys Hang Out in Packs - fiaz
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1911103,00.html
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alex_c
I always find these articles frustrating. They usually seem to boil down to
"we found some area of the brain linked to what the subject is doing showing
more/less activity when the subject does whatever it is they're doing".
Whether the scientists themselves have a deeper understanding of what that
means or not (and I'm not convinced that they always do), I certainly don't.
Follow with some handwaving argument about cavemen hunting mammoths, and end
with the truism "We act the way we do because we're wired that way".

It's a thoroughly unsatisfying read.

Maybe it's because it reminds me of trying to explain why a program works the
way it does by tracking which parts of the computer use more electricity when
you run it - you don't have a debugger, let alone the source code. What can
you possibly learn?

~~~
nazgulnarsil
agreed 100%. this sort of crap is why evolutionary psychology has the bad rap
it does.

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alex_c
It reminded me of this comic, I just had to go and find it:

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/beyond_the_beyond/2009/07/...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/beyond_the_beyond/2009/07/020709.jpg)

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DannoHung
Girls hang out in packs... seriously, have you never seen a gaggle of girls
tittering away?

~~~
endlessvoid94
actually, only on tv. i cant ever remember seeing that in high school, at
least.

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araneae
The research is good, but the article title is misleading; what they've shown
is that females devote more mental activity to interpersonal relationships.
Males are far more disengaged. This is consistent with other data. For
instance, we know that women are better at reading social cues, prefer jobs
where interpersonal relationships are central, enjoy CS classes more if
programming is done with a partner, etc.

Perhaps the fact that women are so interested in interpersonal relationships
explains partly why so few of them gravitate towards jobs in which one
programs all day :).

~~~
gruseom
Your comment prompted me to go back and double-check the article. You're
right: the finding is simply that certain regions of the brain are more active
in girls than boys when considering potential new social interactions. The
"BFFs and packs" business was fabricated by the article writer. You could just
as easily claim the opposite: girls are more interested in people, so they're
interested in more people, so they're more likely to have many friends.

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axod
Never mind that, why is it required for Women to go to the toilet in groups.
What do they _do_ in there?

Can't really imagine a man saying "Hey guys! who wants to come with me to the
toilet?" to his friends.

~~~
Raphael
My guess (anyone know first hand?) is that they can stand in front of the
mirror for a minute or two and exchange there statuses while checking and
adjusting their hair/shirt/makeup.

~~~
axod
I wonder if twitter usage is mainly female. It seems like it should be.

~~~
nostrademons
Before Twitter, LiveJournal usage was predominantly female. Females also seem
disproportionately represented on a lot of Web1.0 forums.

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pmorici
"The authors of the study are reluctant to draw such broad conclusions"

But that doesn't stop Time Magazine from doing so.

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gruseom
Amusing, because a few years ago a friend quoted some research that said
exactly the opposite: girls tend to socialize with lots of people while boys
are more likely to stick with one friend. I remember this because it matched
my kids' behavior exactly (I have a daughter and son) and made me worry less
about my son.

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plesn
"hardwired"... hmmm?? Nothing new under the sun, it doesn't tell anything new
that can't be based on the fact that we are social products and learn our
roles (which were specialized during our history). So it doesn't at all
explain why, but tries to see in the brain "how" does it happen.

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indiejade
34 is a ridiculously small sample; not very scientific. Inconclusive results
that basically boil down to "boys and girls think differently". Reporting via
_Time_ magazine . . . it's surprising.

~~~
ChaitanyaSai
Why is 34 a small number? 10-20 subjects is the typical range for fMRI
studies. While this is probably underpowered, even this number is not
ridiculously small. A satisfactory sample size depends on the experiment;
sweeping statements don't make much sense without the context. Here's a study
that looked at the statistical validity of the usual sample sizes in fMRI
experiments
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4C8NJMP-1&_user=489277&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=961722718&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000022679&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=489277&md5=ea8c1ab88ce705734e0f594ddf0b84f4)

34 is NOT ridiculously small. It is good enough.

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indiejade
_Scientists asked 34 healthy kids, ages 8 to 17, to look at pictures of 40
other boys and girls and judge how much they would like to interact with them
online. The kids were asked to rate those in the photos on a scale from 0
("not interested at all") to 100 ("very interested")._

"Good enough"?

34 is a decent number for the ruse. (As the article stated, the whole
experiment was a ruse).

Since the sample population was ages 8-17, that gives an age range of the
sample population being 10 years +/- 1. The brain can develop a lot in ten
years.

I like evidence. No sense in killing the messenger.

~~~
ChaitanyaSai
The age distribution is a valid question, but tangential to the subject sample
size. Increasing the number of subjects to 340 still won't resolve your
problems with the distribution.

The statistical validity of the brain regions differentially lighting up holds
even if the networks in the brain changed drastically with age. You can
definitely argue the assumptions behind the study, but the methodology is
pretty standard and has better-than-average rigor.

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alann
I tend to think of myself as a one man wolfpack.

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thras
Evolution, baby.

You try hunting a mammoth with a BFF instead of your pack.

~~~
mahmud
BFFs are optimizied for hunting the caveman; the hunter, not the prey (teach a
man to fish, an all.)

