In today’s day and age, we live in a world where the term ‘gender’ is being questioned and explored with much more gusto than ever before – and everything is being taken with not only a whole grain of salt, but a whole darn bag! Since the dawn of time, we have always been divided on what it means to be a ‘boy’ and what it means to be a ‘girl’ and what we want to know is… is there a difference? Is it simply a social construct to get us playing with pink or blue toys? Is it all a load of nonsense? Or are there actual differences between men and women? Well, a brand new study has shed some light on these questions and determined that yuh-huh, men, and women are actually pretty different…
The idea
So, you’re probably fed up of questions right now, but we can imagine that you have one more question to throw at us… what is this study? Published within the Nature Human Behaviour journal, this study states that men and women have a different make-up in their brains that makes women a heck load easier to get on with than men. Thanks to their research, they have been able to find a neurological response within the brains of women that reacts more prominently to rewarding behaviors such as generosity and friendliness. Because of this, women are more inclined to be more socially conscious and aware. This study has also been backed up by various other studies conducted in the past. For example, the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom came to the conclusion that women are much more inclined to give their hard-earned money to charity, and Arizona State University also discovered that women are much more prosocial in social situations. But why is this?
How it works
To truly understand why this is the case, we need to know a little more about the study published in the journal in the first place. When men and female participants were asked to imagine 100 people and rank them in social order, they were then asked to confess how much money (if any) they would share with these 100 people of different ranks. Half of the participants were then administered with Amisulpride, which inhibits the reward center of the brain. The other half of the participants were left as a control group and were allowed to feel the rewards of their monetary gifts. The researchers then examined this so-called reward center to see how much activity occurred when the participants gave away their money, and they discovered that the reward center of the women was incredibly active when they gave away their money, but was almost asleep when the men did so. In fact, the only time the men had any activity within this reward center was when they decided to keep the money for themselves! They came to the conclusion that women are more likely to help others and be generous with their emotional and physical assets, whereas men were less likely to.
A few questions
While the study was accurate in its findings, many psychologists and experts in the field have raised a few questions surrounding the study. Despite these scientific differences, many experts have noted that it would be unwise to take the results as biological fact, as many of these differences can be caused by societal norms that have become ingrained inside of out psyches throughout our lives. However, they still can’t deny that the differences are rather stark between the two genders.
It’s no secret that men and women are pretty different, but there is still some debate between one-and-the-other. So, what do you think of this new study? Do you agree? Do you disagree?
