
Monkey research suggests a biological explanation for toy preferences (2012) - crassus
http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html
======
withad
I'm calling bullshit on the title (which, in the hopefully likely event it
gets changed, is currently "Hormones Explain Why Girls Like Dolls and Boys
Like Trucks"). One study showing a correlation might suggest something worth
looking into further but it hardly "explains" anything.

The results with the monkeys are interesting, if both the research and the
reporting of it are accurate. However, animal models, while certainly useful
indicators, are still just animal models and can't say anything definitive
about _human_ biology and psychology.

And as for those studies on young children, it's a mistake to think that just
because a child is only a few months old they haven't been exposed to enough
cultural influence to skew what they prefer to look at. If just a few of those
parents have put a football mobile above their baby boy's cot or decorated
their little girl's room with Disney princess wallpaper, that familiarity
could easily explain the results.

Do biological differences exist between genders? Absolutely. Are some of those
differences driven by ancient evolutionary pressure rather than modern
culture? It's a reasonable hypothesis, worth investigating. Have those
differences now been explained by a single factor and a few small studies,
half of which were on monkeys, and do they just happen to line up with
traditional gender stereotypes? You'll have to do a lot better than a Live
Science blog that cites nothing but other Live Science blogs to convince me of
that.

EDIT: Well, at least the title was changed to better fit the article, even if
it still doesn't line up with the actual science.

~~~
wmil
Your information is badly out of date. Studies have been consistently showing
biology beating culture for the last 20 years.

~~~
dalke
What are these studies? The metadata studies I've heard about say otherwise.
That is, some studies say one thing, other studies say the opposite, and so
it's impossible to really conclude anything by choosing a subset of the
literature.

For a recent lay presentation on this topic, see
[http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2014/02/03/ftbcon2-e...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2014/02/03/ftbcon2-evidence-
based-feminism-w-full-transcript/) . At the top is a link to a Google document
(
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1slJbQpPTlg_m6cKgsarzGLqY...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1slJbQpPTlg_m6cKgsarzGLqYNfEpuvmqv4QTV303Fro/edit?pli=1)
) with full citations.

~~~
ll123
Here are some I think are interesting.
[http://www.isna.org/node/564](http://www.isna.org/node/564)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)

They talk about male babies who were sexually reassigned at birth and given
female hormones. However many of them decided to reidentify as males later on
life, showing that even with female hormones and a female upbringing, it was
not enough to make them adopt a female gender identity.

I wouldn't say this is conclusive evidence. But I think it's enough to show
that people should keep an open mind about this subject.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)

I'm learning about this now. _Shocking_. This could pass as some story about
medical experiments during nazy germany.

------
AutoCorrect
It's interesting watching the conversation over sex differences take shape. On
the one hand, we have a group of people that say even though males and females
are biologically different there are NO differences in the way we think or
perform. At the other extreme you have the "girls are nurturing, males are
war-like" argument. What it really is is a combination of both nature and
nurture. The effects of testosterone and estrogen are well known. Brain
plasticity is a marvelous thing. Add to that 'developmental windows' where
certain behaviors and predilections become our (as in each individual
person's) baseline behavior and you have a fantastic spectrum of humanity.
Average people will tend more toward stereotypical behavior, because the
stereotypes define average. Those at either end of the spectrum may be a hyper
stereotype or a stereotype defying unique one-of-a-kind individual. Don't hate
it, embrace it.

I found the below links a week ago, just browsing for 'sex differences':

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-
diff...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-
differences/201101/how-can-there-still-be-sex-difference-even-when-there-is)

[http://sugarandslugs.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/sex-
difference...](http://sugarandslugs.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/sex-differences/)

[http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx](http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx)

~~~
agumonkey
It's always sad to witness this need to flatten things on a space of two
extrema. Often it's a complex combination that can't be pinned down neither in
space nor time.

~~~
saraid216
I really, really like the Genderbread Person for this reason.

~~~
agumonkey
Never heard of it. Pretty nice. I'd just change the 'and' in sexual
orientations since people desire and feeling can target different types.

rapid picture link ps:
[http://i.imgur.com/t7Lfh4p.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/t7Lfh4p.jpg)

~~~
saraid216
It actually oversimplifies all four dimensions, if you can even claim with any
surety that there _are_ exactly four dimensions. There are things like "third
gender" [1] and there are demisexuals [2] and there are asexuals and so on.

What I like about it is that it's just slightly too big as a concept
presentation (though it _feels_ like it isn't) and mostly evokes the
recognition that There Are Things You Didn't Know About.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)

[2]
[http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Demisexual](http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Demisexual)

------
athesyn
Honest question, why are people so afraid of there being inherent differences
between boys and girls?

~~~
bitops
Imagine a scientific study that just said "Scientific justification for social
oppression found." In a nutshell, I believe that's why.

It's not even that it's bad for there to be differences between the sexes;
what's bad is that some people will inevitable take these studies as
justification for their sexist views and attitudes.

~~~
saraid216
You don't have to imagine it:

[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2766200?uid=3739696&ui...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2766200?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103484766073)

"The Negro: Is he a biological inferior?" (1927)

That was from one crappy Google search. I can probably go home and break open
books to get indirect references for a lot more studies.

~~~
sltkr
But that article concludes that “the Negro” is NOT inferior:

> I have tried to review briefly the important fields in which evidence of
> Negro inferiority is most likely to be found, if found at all. In no case is
> the proof conspicuous by its volume---rather the opposite appears true.

~~~
saraid216
I actually wondered how such an article got published as late as 1927. That
would explain it. I can go find a better one tonight. More broadly, though,
here's a Wikipedia page on the subject:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism)

Glancing through the citations, #33 is "Tiedemann, Friedrich (1836). "On the
Brain of the Negro, Compared with that of the European and the Orang-outang"
(PDF). Phylosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 126."

------
judk
My favorite part about baby psych studies is how the researcher gets to pick
whether "prolonged staring at an object" means "natural affinity for the
object" or "surprise at the unexpected object"

------
ris
Aren't these the totally debunked monkey research studies that are being
referenced?

~~~
drhayes9
Yup:
[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/08/05/3816216.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/08/05/3816216.htm)

~~~
agarden
That article is about MRI studies, not monkeys. Do you have any links about
the monkey studies?

~~~
drhayes9
Sure: [http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/03/entertainment/la-
ca-...](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/03/entertainment/la-ca-rebecca-
jordan-young-20101003)

Search for "monkey".

The basic premise is that drawing cultural associations cross species is
pretty much a no-go; a preference for a "pot" doesn't validate traditional
gender roles any more than a preference for a particular color would -- it's
more a reflection on our own cultural biases than it is a proof of hard-wired
gender roles.

~~~
mcantelon
That references one study with monkeys. Was it the same one?

~~~
nerfhammer
One but not the other.

What that linked article was about:

[http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/imagingthebody/Hand...](http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/imagingthebody/Handouts/alexander_2002.pdf)

What this post also discusses:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/)

------
elgabogringo
And I bet male monkeys prefer to code, while female monkeys prefer to work in
marketing.

~~~
interstitial
I always through female monkeys preferred Elementary Education and males
Business Mangemanent with a concentration in IT.

------
aestra
I'm just going to leave this here for further discussion.

[http://www.newsweek.com/why-parents-may-cause-gender-
differe...](http://www.newsweek.com/why-parents-may-cause-gender-differences-
kids-79501)

In one, scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled
adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys" (actually girls) as
angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing
girls, and described the "girls" (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged
more than adults who knew the babies were boys. Dozens of such disguised-
gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls
differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens. In
another study, mothers estimated how steep a slope their 11-month-olds could
crawl down. Moms of boys got it right to within one degree; moms of girls
underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees, even though
there are no differences in the motor skills of infant boys and girls. But
that prejudice may cause parents to unconsciously limit their daughter's
physical activity. How we perceive children—sociable or remote, physically
bold or reticent—shapes how we treat them and therefore what experiences we
give them. Since life leaves footprints on the very structure and function of
the brain, these various experiences produce sex differences in adult behavior
and brains—the result not of innate and inborn nature but of nurture.

For her new book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into
Troublesome Gaps—And What We Can Do About It, Eliot immersed herself in
hundreds of scientific papers (her bibliography runs 46 pages). Marching
through the claims like Sherman through Georgia, she explains that assertions
of innate sex differences in the brain are either "blatantly false," "cherry-
picked from single studies," or "extrapolated from rodent research" without
being confirmed in people. For instance, the idea that the band of fibers
connecting the right and left brain is larger in women, supposedly supporting
their more "holistic" thinking, is based on a single 1982 study of only 14
brains. Fifty other studies, taken together, found no such sex difference—not
in adults, not in newborns. Other baseless claims: that women are hard-wired
to read faces and tone of voice, to defuse conflict, and to form deep
friendships; and that "girls' brains are wired for communication and boys' for
aggression." Eliot's inescapable conclusion: there is "little solid evidence
of sex differences in children's brains."

Yet there are differences in adults' brains, and here Eliot is at her most
original and persuasive: explaining how they arise from tiny sex differences
in infancy. For instance, baby boys are more irritable than girls. That makes
parents likely to interact less with their "nonsocial" sons, which could cause
the sexes' developmental pathways to diverge. By 4 months of age, boys and
girls differ in how much eye contact they make, and differences in
sociability, emotional expressivity, and verbal ability—all of which depend on
interactions with parents—grow throughout childhood. The message that sons are
wired to be nonverbal and emotionally distant thus becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The sexes "start out a little bit different" in fussiness, says
Eliot, and parents "react differently to them," producing the differences seen
in adults.

Those differences also arise from gender conformity. You often see the claim
that toy preferences—trucks or dolls—appear so early, they must be innate. But
as Eliot points out, 6- and 12-month-olds of both sexes prefer dolls to
trucks, according to a host of studies. Children settle into sex-based play
preferences only around age 1, which is when they grasp which sex they are,
identify strongly with it, and conform to how they see other, usually older,
boys or girls behaving. "Preschoolers are already aware of what's acceptable
to their peers and what's not," writes Eliot. Those play preferences then
snowball, producing brains with different talents.

~~~
interstitial
At some point you need to ask yourself, why the hell do I care? This is so
much low-level posturing and image-crafting on the part of anyone who
participates. It bespeaks of a self-righteous society with no ability to
organize or plan other than whine about the color of the bike shed and other
narcissisms of small differences.

~~~
supergauntlet
What are you even saying? You could use this as a response to like 60% of the
comments on HN.

------
pnathan
Title relatively misleading.

The researcher's website is here:
[http://www.geriannealexander.com/](http://www.geriannealexander.com/)

I leave it to more expert people to analyze the publications, which appear to
be available for the price of name & email.

------
codev
Bullshit

Read the main paper cited in the article by Alexander at Texas A&M in 2002. It
says: female MONKEYS prefer COOKING POTS.

Then if you aren't debilitated by laughing read the methods, it's a total
piece of shit yet is quoted again and again because it agrees with people's
prejudices.

~~~
gus_massa
Do you have a direct link? I couldn’t found it.

But there is a strange linked press note about the male-typical digit ratios:
[http://www.livescience.com/18484-finger-length-masculine-
fac...](http://www.livescience.com/18484-finger-length-masculine-faces.html)

> _The researchers studied a group of 17 boys ages 4 to 11 and measured their
> finger lengths, and took images of their faces. They digitized these images
> by marking 70 measurement points to compare the face shapes. Analyzing the
> data on the computer, the researchers were able to see what parts of the
> face could be linked to digit ratio, and how strongly they were correlated._

It’s a small sample number, too many fuzzy criteria and it looks like an easy
set of measurements to cherrypick or find spurious correlations and
"explanations".

------
judk
My son likes dolls, and my son likes trucks. Is he a secret hermaphrodite?

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Many boys like to play with dolls. What are action figures after all?

I think toys are a bad measure for any study related to gender.

------
Gracana
Anyone interested in gender studies and the current understanding of gender
ought to read "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine. It is a fantastically
interesting book.

[http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-
Neurosexism-D...](http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-
Difference/dp/0393340244)

------
scotty79
Do boys actually prefer trucks and balls or do they just not prefer dolls and
pick a toy acording to some other quality (complexity of movement?) not taking
into account how much the shape resembles human?

Maybe girls would also pick trucks and balls if human shped figures were not
available?

------
exarch
Taboos are alive and well among the scientifically literate. If you don't
believe me, just check out the cognitive dissonance in this thread.

------
j2kun
Who's to say monkeys are not also socialized by gender?

------
gesman
It also finally explains that boys like girls!

~~~
angersock
Red card.

------
amalag
Why or how?

------
icantthinkofone
So, despite what everyone has been saying, girls are different from boys?!

------
billconan
and they all like stuffed animals

