Gender and Personality 1
Personality and Gender Differences in Global Perspective
David P. Schmitt, Audrey E. Long, Allante McPhearson,
Kirby O’Brien, Brooke Remmert, & Seema H. Shah
Bradley University
Wordcount: 5,862 words, not references
Keywords: Gender Differences, Personality, Cross-Cultural Psychology
Gender and Personality 2
Abstract
Men’s and women’s personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of
development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender
socialization, and socio-structural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists
expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender
egalitarianism. Several large cross-cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating
these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most
aspects of personality—Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self-esteem, subjective well-being,
depression, and values—are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles,
gender socialization, and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when
examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits
such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of
the observed cultural variations in men’s and women’s personalities. Evolutionary theories
regarding ecologically-evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in
explaining global variation in human personality.
Gender and Personality 3
Personality and Gender Differences in Global Perspective
“That human males and females should have evolved to be psychologically identical…is a
theoretical impossibility, and, indeed, turns out to be untrue”
(Vandermassen, 2011, p. 733)
Men’s and women’s basic personality traits appear to differ, on average, in several
respects. For instance, gender differences in characteristics related to negative emotionality (e.g.,
neuroticism, anxiety, depression, rumination) have been documented across systematic reviews
(Ellis, 2011a; Hyde et al., 2008; Russo & Green, 1993), formal meta-analyses (Feingold, 1994;
Johnson & Whisman, 2013; Twenge & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2002), and large cross-cultural surveys
(Bodas & Ollendick, 2005; Costa et al., 2001; De Bolle et al., 2015; Hopcroft & McLaughlin,
2012; Lynn & Martin, 1997; McCrae et al., 2005; Lippa, 2010). In 2014, Hyde reviewed extant
studies of gender differences in personality across a wide variety of psychological traits and
concluded moderate to large gender differences are consistently observed in agreeableness,
sensation seeking, physical aggression, interests in things versus people, attitudes toward casual
sex, and certain sexual behaviors (e.g., masturbation and pornography use). Smaller, but still
persistent, gender differences in personality were found for measures of negative affectivity,
conscientiousness, gregariousness, reward sensitivity, and self-esteem (see also, Zell, Krizan, &
Teeter, 2015).
In contrast to examining personality gender differences a single trait at a time, some
researchers have utilized multivariate approaches to quantify the overall degree of gender
differentiation within a delimited psychological space. Del Giudice and his colleagues (2012)
Gender and Personality 4
documented across 15 traits of Raymond Cattell’s personality theory—traits ranging from
dominance and liveliness to perfectionism and tension—that overall gender differences in
personality are quite large. Within the realm of Cattellian personality space, there is a scant 10%
overlap in men’s and women’s personalities. Similarly, Conroy-Beam et al. (2015) examined
gender differences across 18 mate preferences simultaneously and found only 23% overlap in
men’s and women’s overall mate preference distributions. It appears many psychological gender
differences, from a multivariate perspective, are actually quite large—larger than they seem
when examining one trait at a time.
Origins of Gender Differences in Personality
Among the more likely forces behind large and pervasive gender differences in
personality are the specialized designs of men’s and women’s evolved psychology, universal
gender role socialization processes (generated, in part, by evolved psychology; see Low, 1989;
Pirlott & Schmitt, 2013), and a wide range of other biological and cultural factors (Archer &
Lloyd, 2002; Mealey, 2000). According to the organizational hypothesis of gender
differentiation, a key origin of psychological gender differences is the prenatal experience (or
lack thereof) of androgen-related brain masculinization. In humans, a critical period exists in the
second trimester of gestation during which male brains, but typically not female brains, are
permanently altered in function and structure in ways that produce masculinized personalities,
cognitive abilities, and play preferences (Baron-Cohen, 2004; Berenbaum & Beltz, 2011).
Evidence supporting this organizational viewpoint arises from several sources, including:
1) the degree of prenatal androgen exposure within normal levels predicts gender differentiated
psychology in girls and boys (Auyeung et al., 2009; Cohen-Bendahan et al., 2005; Hines, 2006);
2) girls prenatally exposed to male-typical levels of androgens (compared to their unaffected
Gender and Personality 5
sisters) express more male-typical psychology (Alexander et al., 2009; Nordenström et al., 2002;
Tapp et al., 2011; Udry et al., 1995); 3) infants (as young as 5 months; Moore & Johnson, 2008)
exhibit psychological gender differences before extensive socialization (Alexander & Wilcox,
2012; Geary, 2010); 4) children exhibit many psychological gender differences before they have
a conception of what gender roles are or even what gender is (see Campbell, 2006; Campbell et
al., 2004; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1980); 5) experimental and observational studies of neurological
and hormonal substrates of adult gender identity, gender dysphoria, and transsexualism imply
some degree of biological gender differentiation in men’s and women’s psychology (Olsson et
al., 2016; Saraswat et al., 2015; Udry, 2000; Van Goozen et al., 1995; Zucker et al., 2016); and
6) experimental and observational studies of nonhuman animals (including closely related
primates) implicate evolved origins for many gender differences in personality, cognition, and
behavior (Alexander & Hines, 2002; Gosling & John, 1999; Hassett et al., 2008; Simpson et al.,
2016). Gendered predispositions toward masculinity or femininity arising from prenatal
experiences, if they do exist, in no way imply men’s and women’s psychologies form a simple
dichotomous binary, nor are such gender differences fixed and unchangeable after birth (Fausto-
Sterling et al., 2012).
Indeed, many psychological gender differences arise long after prenatal experiences,
reliably emerging from activational effects that generate gendered personality during puberty or
at other critical developmental stages and epigenetic sensitive periods (Ellis, 2004; Hines et al.,
2015; Salk & Hyde, 2012). For example, gender differences in neuroticism do not reach their full
adult form until around age 14 (De Bolle et al., 2015). Whereas some activational effects on
personality are temporary (e.g., due to fluctuating hormone levels; Kimura & Hampson, 1994),
others are more permanent and further depend on earlier organizational effects (Berenbaum &