During my recent book tour, I was scheduled to sit down in person with Fraser Myers of Spiked magazine to talk about my book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences. But the British weather had other ideas: A heatwave scuppered our plans, and we ended up doing the interview remotely after I’d returned to the cooler climate of Malaysia.
It was a great conversation. Among other things, we discussed:
The largest psychological sex difference ever documented (it’s probably not what you’d think)
Sex differences in toy preferences, sexual behavior, and aggression
Why men and women tend to gravitate toward different occupations
The gender-equality paradox: the surprising finding that some sex differences are larger, rather than smaller, in wealthier, more gender-equal nations
Why we should talk openly about sex differences rather than pretending they don’t exist
The interview is now up on YouTube and the Spiked website.
If you enjoy the conversation and want to dig deeper into the issues, you can pick up a copy of A Billion Years of Sex Differences at the link below.
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Related Reading from the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences
I recently gave a professorial lecture at my university, focused on some of my theoretical work on the evolution of human sex differences. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the lecture.
Decoding the Gender-Equality Paradox
One of the most surprising discoveries of the last few decades is known as the gender-equality paradox. This refers to the fact that, for a large number of traits, sex differences are larger, rather than smaller, in more gender-equal nations. The finding is surprising because it seems entirely plausible that, in cultures where men and women are treated differently and play different roles in society, sex differences will tend to be magnified. Even if there’s an innate contribution to many sex differences, this seems like a reasonable expectation. But the reasonable expectation turns out to be wrong. In fact, it’s not just wrong; it has things back-to-front, at least for some traits.
Is the book making you money? Just curious . It's a nice feeling to see numbers go up and up (e.g. sales numbers). Addictive even.