I'm newly frequenting this site, but don't people usually back their post with references rather than just positing opinions here?

@JiminyCricket. They're supposed to, yet, alas, they often enough do not.

@JiminyCricket. and Philip Klocking would tell you that I am one of the worst offenders, were he not so charmingly polite!

Again, dodging on a subtlety... If there ARE, (as you admit) inherent psychological differences, it is logical to presume that these difference might lead to differences in career choices, does it not? I am not saying that there is zero influence from societal stereotypes, only that you cannot prove a direct cause and effect relationship. The question is really, do differences in career choices come about as a result of stereotypes, or do stereotypes arise from the different career choices men and women are naturally drawn to as a result of inherent differences?

I have made an edit accordingly. I don't know if you can see my explanation of the edit, but I gave you full credit for pointing out that I was being as much of an a-hole as JP.

Sex differences in functional connectivity during fetal brain development Sex differences in human neonatal social perception Experience-independent sex differences in newborn macaques Sex differences in children's toy preferences Sex differences in chimpanzees' use of sticks as play objects resemble those of children

@MichaelHall You are correct and Marco, his childish insults notwithstanding, is wrong.

@wizzwizz4 First, your quote says nothing of "social factors". Age is biological. Second, increase in dimorphism over time does not contradict the existence of early dimorphism (e.g. fetal and neonatal) in any way. Third, I never said social factors don't exist. In contrast, you're in denial about the biological factors, for ideological reasons.

What I find interesting is the polarity of opinion generated by the answer, with almost as many down votes as up.

It would be an interesting experiment to buy your son a doll and your daughter a Meccano set. My bet is that they would trade them.

@user76284 My previous comment (accusing you of not reading the studies) was uncalled for; I apologise and retract it. Your contribution merits a more in-depth criticism than I gave. So, paper 1: Of course there are going to be sex differences in brain matter – there are differences induced by basically every foetal hormone. That doesn't tell you what the differences mean, or if they mean anything at all. (More on that in my concluding comment.)

Paper 2: The intro gives 3 motivations for its theory. (1) cannot be distinguished from social influence, (2) is (3), which is not correct. While he's not a quack, much of Simon Baron-Cohen's work in this area has failed to replicate (by his own admission) or wasn't really science in the first place. I don't see how (4) supports. Method: they used an actual person (one of the researchers), who isn't stated to have been blind to the sex of the infant: that could have influenced results (e.g. PMC123187).

Paper 4: The study doesn't control for social influence, which accumulates over time (whereas biologically-driven instinctual behaviour in humans tends to decrease over time, sexuality in adolescence notwithstanding). A more relevant quotation than before: “Additionally, an effect of the length of time since study publication was found: girls played more with female-typed toys in earlier studies than in later studies (β = .70, p < .0001), whereas boys played more with male-typed toys (β = .46, p < .05) in earlier studies than in more recent studies.” This matches shifts in cultural attitude.

Paper 5: wild chimpanzees are also social, with a male dominance hierarchy. Show me similar behaviour in bonobos and I will be convinced that social factors don't dominate. Paper 3: I think this is solid research on macaques, though they are not great apes: this is the most convincing paper of the lot.

The it's-sex-differences "hypothesis" has about as much explanatory power as the "theories" of Sigmund Freud. Enough sex-differences theories are challenged by cross-cultural studies that it takes a lot to convince me it's relevant in any particular case. (Sex differences don't even constrain human sexuality as much as you'd expect; heck, they don't even fully govern gender.) I'm highly suspicious that it'd govern tendency-to-philosophise, and you haven't shown it should.