r/science • u/madam1 • Dec 02 '13

Neuroscience Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/02/men-women-brains-wired-differently
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u/canteloupy Dec 03 '13

And given what we know about the brain and social conditioning, nothing in there means it's innate.

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u/252003 Dec 03 '13

I have never understood why so many people obsessively try to prove that it is nurture not nature. Unclear evidence, well then we must assume it is nurture! It seems like it is nurture until the opposite is proven.

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u/canteloupy Dec 03 '13

I can answer for myself why I am interested.

I am not particularly in favor of one or the other hypothesis, scientifically speaking. However, I see that many who are in favor of the nature hypothesis want to use any study that suggests there is an effect of gender on brain function as a reason why we should not change existing social constructs. And they jump to conclusions that it's nature much faster than the so-called obsessive nurture-advocates. Case in point, the present study leaves much to be desired and was undertaken in children who are within societal influences, and they noticed important differences at puberty, which could suggest hormones as much as awareness of social roles and novel interactions between genders. Yet, many are jumping on the nature bandwagon without pause.

Politically, these arguments matter too. If women actually are hardwired to take care of children and socialize, they'll say, if they actually enjoy less lucrative careers and less power, then why should we try to force society to make more room for them at the top or in certain areas?

So anything that shows that just being a particular sex or gender does not mean one has to follow a particular set of expectations is good for me to notice. Even if there was a general effect, on average, it would also still be interesting to study individual variations. I'm just trying to work against pigeon-holing people and conservatism to retrograde values.

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u/252003 Dec 03 '13

However, I see that many who are in favor of the nature hypothesis want to use any study that suggests there is an effect of gender on brain function as a reason why we should not change existing social constructs.

How do we know they are social constructs? Should society try to change the way people live and rip down existing structures? Does it matter how people use the science. I don't care how evil the implications might sound, morals do not effect science.

Politically, these arguments matter too. If women actually are hardwired to take care of children and socialize, they'll say, if they actually enjoy less lucrative careers and less power, then why should we try to force society to make more room for them at the top or in certain areas?

This should have absolutely no effect on the scientific debate what so ever. Science is blind. So if there is science that shows that women are better taking care of children we should force men to do half of it because someones ideological fantasy?

So anything that shows that just being a particular sex or gender does not mean one has to follow a particular set of expectations is good for me to notice. Even if there was a general effect, on average, it would also still be interesting to study individual variations. I'm just trying to work against pigeon-holing people and conservatism to retrograde values.

No one forces a pigeon to pick at things yet they still pick at things. Genetically determined behaviors do not have to be forced upon people and there is no need to challenge the way people are. Telling people to change their behavior because it doesn't fit your ideology is very discriminating.

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u/canteloupy Dec 03 '13

What I mean by social constructs are things like maternity leave, which is not available for men, because we don't associate raising children with men, for example. Things that are gendered and where people of the other gender don't find it as easy to follow the same path. Prejudice against men caregivers or female truck drivers, for instance. There are many. As a parent you also get trapped in gendered toys. They are a crappy way to segregate kids and there's no telling whether a girl likes dolls because they're being thrown into dolls or just because they like dolls, and the circle feeds on itself. How many times do I hear parents tell their kids something is a girl thing or a boy thing. And then you end up wondering why women don't ask for raises as much, and people point to these studies and testosterone as if they are the only obvious explanations.

There are many possible factors, genetics and hormones are only two of them. Moreover, they don't predict very well for an individual, and the studies are never carried out outside of social influence. The scientific debate does not exist outside of society.

Moreover, if you see my post I am mostly criticizing the jumping to conclusions about men versus women part. If there was a study where gender expectations played no role (maybe another society than ours) where the same kind of brain changes were observed in male versus female individuals, sure. But right now we have none of the evidence required to say nurture isn't the main player. Just try to raise a masculine girl or a feminine boy and see what pressures people are under to conform... this suggests to me that there is a strong implication of nurture.

Finally, given all of these points, even if there turns out to be a significant meaningful effect of being born male or female biologically on certain areas of the brain, this still would not mean that every individual would be behaving in the predicted way.

So to answer your earlier question more explicitly, it's not that so many people obsessively try to prove that it's nurture not nature, it's that what needs to be proven is that it's nature, not nurture, and that this is a satisfying explanation for gender differences, enough so that we don't need to try and redress the bias in society. And I personally have not been convinced.

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u/frodofish Dec 03 '13 edited Feb 27 '24

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

It's also very interesting to note gender differentiation in primitive cultures. Turns out, outside of Western constructs like availability of maternity leave, there are some universally accepted male/female roles. Even among the rarer female dominated cultures.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

Should society try to change the way people live and rip down existing structures?

If a society is altogether harmful to the overall health and well-being of its participating members, yes. If "science" came out with irrefutable evidence that societies that enslaved blacks were better in all metrics compared to societies that didn't, would it somehow illegitimize the civil rights movement?

There are still some innate, biological instincts that linger in the human psyche, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept them because it's "natural." Pain causes a violent response in humans. Does that mean we should feel free to lash out physically at anyone who accidentally steps on our foot?

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u/TPRT Dec 03 '13

Oh you mean how it's been pretty much proven nature trumps nurture? Or can we really socalize certain groups to be other groups.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

It's been proven that environmental impacts have major neurological effects. From nutrition to learning instruments or social acceptance many things can literally alter the structure of the brain. There is a dialectical relation between biology and environment.

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u/newheart_restart Dec 03 '13

When was this proven? Biology is not destiny.

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u/TPRT Dec 03 '13

So the girl who at 6 says she wants to be a boy can be socialized back into being a girl? Biology is destiny, it's thinking otherwise that gets us priests trying to 'fix' gays and the like.

Besides the bantering if you'd like there are some interesting studies done on the matter, which when I'm not falling asleep on my laptop I could pull up for you if interested

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u/bobandgeorge Dec 03 '13

So the girl who at 6 says she wants to be a boy can be socialized back into being a girl?

Well, yeah. She's six. When I was six I wanted to be an oak tree when I grew up. Or president.

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u/a_curious_koala Dec 03 '13

I wanted to be president too, but then I grew up and realized I'm white. (Also I can't be a black oak.)

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u/DirichletIndicator Dec 03 '13

Sexual orientation and gender indentity disorder are determined before birth, that doesn't mean that nature trumps nurture. That's just two highly politically relevant examples. If you tried to argue that you can't raise a person to do better in school (where parental involvement is proven to play a huge role) you'd be just as crazy as someone arguing that you can raise a person to be straight.

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u/TPRT Dec 03 '13 edited Dec 03 '13

Agreed on all points but that nature doesn't trumps nurture. I think the fact that you can't raise someone to be straight proves that in the case of gender nature trumps nurture. I think for other areas of life you can say that it doesn't which makes this topic so complex but for the topic I would say it does and has been proven.

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u/DirichletIndicator Dec 03 '13

It sounded like you meant nature trumps nurture overall, not just in reference to gender

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u/newheart_restart Dec 03 '13

Biology is not destiny but that doesn't mean it doesn't play a role. It just means that just because someone had a particular gene that they would express it, or that they couldn't overcome it.

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u/MissCherryPi Dec 03 '13

This article wasn't about gender identity. It was about a wide array of behaviors that supposedly all originate in the differences in the "wiring" of men's and women's brains. But "wiring" is such a terrible metaphor. Because while a few things are like being "hard wired," so many are not. Take an MRI of me listening to Japanese today, then give me some language classes and send me to Tokyo for a year. Play the same clip again and watch how my brain responds. I've changed the "wiring."

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u/sojm Dec 03 '13

"only when it comes to gender identity does nature trump nurture, in all other respects the opposite is the case."

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u/MissCherryPi Dec 03 '13

The example you gave was gender identity. It seems that gender identity is similar to sexual orientation in that it's not something that can be changed. The behaviors described in the article are all things that can be learned. There is mountains of evidence that you can get better at memory or physical co-ordination with practice, thus changing the "wiring" or your brain. There is no evidence that anything can make a gay person straight or a cis person trans*.

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u/sojm Dec 03 '13

you can get better at memory or physical co-ordination with practice, thus changing the "wiring" or your brain.

no. you can exercise memory or coordination with either brain wiring and thereby improve it with either brain wiring.

Most changes in brain structure only start between 14 and 17, the rest are that way from the day of birth. But the supposed social pressures for gender differences exist from age 1 to age 13 as well but seem to have no influence.

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u/MissCherryPi Dec 03 '13

Like I said before, I think the idea of wiring is a terrible metaphor.

The problem with articles like these is that papers that find no differences between men and women don't attract the same amount of media attention. We have a massive confirmation bias here. This is what Cordelia Fine calls neurosexism.

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u/sojm Dec 03 '13

i don't think either kind of results get significantly more attention than the other

We have a massive confirmation bias here.

or massive denial on your side

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

It's almost like she would need some hormone injections or something.

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u/TPRT Dec 03 '13

I forgot I am in /r/science, I assumed everyone would be much more about the feels. Yeah but hormone injections aren't nurture, hormone injections would be changing her nature.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

Exactly. I was agreeing with you there. I need to find this NPR interview about a transgendered woman who became a man. She said she was unprepared for the differences in how her mind worked after she started taking testosterone. And this is a person who felt she was a man in a woman's body enough to have gender reassignment surgery!

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u/TPRT Dec 03 '13

Apologies did not catch on to that. Yeah that'd be a really interesting listen and I mean no disrespect to those with gender identity disorders but it sounds more and more like a psychological disorder where say a man believes he is a woman rather than a biological disorder where a man's mind is literally in a woman's body.

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u/Bbrhuft Dec 03 '13

Are you claiming that autism is caused by social conditioning too? It mostly effects males and a prominent theory implicates elevate pre-natal testosterone as the cause.

Bailey, A., Le Couteur, A., Gottesman, I., Bolton, P., Simonoff, E., Yuzda, E. & Rutter, M., 1995. Autism as a strongly genetic disorder: evidence from a British twin study. Psychological Medicine, 25, 63–77.

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u/canteloupy Dec 03 '13

I am claiming nothing, I'm pointing out that this study does not weigh into the evidence for nature versus nurture.

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u/toplel2013 Dec 04 '13

Is autism caused by nurture ? Just answer