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OK, Will, I am fuzzing up your thesis about sex difference because I wonder about how grounded parts of it are, and like I said, I find exaggerations of sex difference slightly maddening. So a few thoughts in response to yours (and from here on out I am channeling Slate columnist Amanda Schaffer, who knows much more than I do about all of this).
I agree with your claim about aggression, to the extent that boys on average tend to score higher on specific measures for aggression that's physical and verbal. I'm not sure the relevance of the study you cite though; I'd offer this one instead.
About responsiveness and social editing, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Responsiveness to anger, pain, or what? And does social editing mean changing the way you present yourself based on cues from people around you, and is the idea that women do more of it? I Googled to not much avail. I see that the second study you cite sort of relates to some idea of responsiveness (though the findings show only a partial sex difference). But the third study is about money and kid toy preferences, which doesn't seem to relate to responsiveness or social editing (am I missing something). And what's the fourth one supposed to signify? The authors say that the finding that the male chimps played more "is practice for later dominance behavior." But why--couldn't it just as easily be about females' greater industriousness or something? And in any case, aren't we far afield from whether men are more likely to be desirous and women more likely to want to be desired, itself a speculation based on preliminary research?
Feel free to ignore me--I know you have your own blog to manage!
ADDENDUM: On bloggingheads.tv, Ann Althouse and I discuss how women's sexuality may differ from men's and what this new sex research means for feminism.
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Slate's William Saletan returns for a second guest post on female sexuality:
Hey, no fair with the complications, Emily! I had a nice, simple thesis
that men and women were different,
and you had to go fuzz
it up with all your nuance and stuff. But, heck, I’m a gentleman. You took
my bait; I’ll take yours.
I can’t rehash all the research on sex patterns in aggression, responsiveness,
and social editing in this space or without putting everyone to sleep. Plus,
why trust my spin? Here are abstracts and write-ups from a few recent studies,
which can be interpreted in various ways. A little nature here, a little nurture
there. Have at it.
1. Do angry men
get noticed?
(Current Biology,
2006)
Angry
male faces were detected significantly more rapidly by male than female
observers. … Our findings are consistent with the notion of a perceptual system
in both males and females that has evolved to rapidly detect aggression in
males.
In
humans, evolution has resulted in marked differentiation between males and
females, including differences in the structural and functional organization of
the brain. These differences are reflected in patterns of cognitive and
behavioural abilities. For example, females tend to perform
better than males at fine motor and perceptual discrimination tasks, whereas
males are better at route-finding tasks. Males are also physically larger
and more aggressive than females, and so more likely to pose a physical threat. Such physical differences between the sexes may in turn have
shaped the cognitive processes involved in detecting threatening behaviour in
others. Early detection of an angry facial expression, for example, might
reduce the likelihood of an injurious or potentially fatal confrontation. … Recent evidence suggests that females are better than males
at recognizing non-threatening facial expressions such as happiness or sadness.
2.
Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others
(Nature,
2006)
We engaged male and female volunteers
in an economic game, in which two confederates played fairly or unfairly, and
then measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while
these same volunteers observed the confederates receiving pain. Both sexes
exhibited empathy-related activation in pain-related brain areas … towards fair
players. However, these empathy-related responses were significantly reduced in
males when observing an unfair person receiving pain. This effect was
accompanied by increased activation in reward-related areas, correlated with an
expressed desire for revenge.
3. Sex
differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children
(Hormones
and Behavior, 2008)
Male monkeys, like
boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female
monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. … The
similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop
without explicit gendered socialization. We offer the hypothesis that toy
preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which
are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and
humans.
(More on the study here:
The animals were offered two categories
of toys— ones with wheels such as wagons and other vehicles, and various dolls
and cuddly toys.)
4. Sex
differences in the development of termite-fishing skills in the wild
chimpanzees
(Animal Behavior,
2005)
[T]he techniques of female offspring closely
resembled those of their mothers whereas the techniques of male offspring did
not, suggesting that the process by which termite fishing is learned differs
for male and female chimpanzees.
(More on the study here:
By the first day, adult
females were getting at the mustard and a young female watched carefully and
began to pick up the skills, she said. Two young males did not fare as well—one
simply sat next to his mother and tried to steal some mustard from her, Dr.
Lonsdorf said. The behavior of both sexes may seem familiar to many parents,
she said, adding, "The sex differences we found in the chimps mimic some
of the findings from the human child development literature." She pointed
out, however, that at least in the case of chimps, each is doing something
important, since the males' play is practice for later dominance behavior.)