Hmm I always thought the traditional definition of EL was customer service workers, not in a relationship, is how I learned it. Is this a commonly accepted use of the term EL, in relationships or is it being hijacked for lack of a better term?
Lol, it is such a basic concept in neuroscience/ cognitive psych that I don't really think you can call it snake oil, you can't grab a brain and say male or female like you can bones. But if someone did it would be amusing because then at least someone might give me a number of articles to post so I could argue. But just for you a more biological neuroscience abstract: ;)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26621705
I prefer those over the cognitive psych ones because often you get more argument in regards to psychology. But I can post some of those, if anyone is interest. But really people, to post articles I need you to narrow down what KIND. There are so many that choosing is a bit difficult so if I know a bit more of interests, I can be a bit more interesting. :)
I'm pretty sure the average person has elementary or no knowledge in this field...so a lot of what we say probably sounds retarded compared to one in this field...but it might not be a good introduction to link a paper published less than a month ago in PNAS and expect all of society to suddenly wake up and think...oh we're actually the same! Maybe a recent review article would be a better start? And there are limitations and research questions I have as an outsider curious to know more related to the PNAS article.
Gin1984, you sound like an authority on this subject, and I am definitely NOT an authority or even familiar. So what I want to know from you is...
1. The study basically applied different analyses to previously collected data sets in their field. There was no experimental design, patients enrolled, trial implemented. They took data already collected and looked at it a different way, am I correct?
2. The study only focuses on brain structure. But that assumes brain structure defines gender differences. But we know left-handed people are better at certain things than right-handers. Why do some say it's sexist to say men and women tend to be better at certain things than the other? Biology is very hard to overcome and hateful attitudes sometimes comes from inconvenient truths from our biology. Can't fix it...yet apparently.
3. They do acknowledge there are female/male structure differences (little but perhaps enough) in the study. Bonobos and humans have less than 1/2 of 1% difference (chromosome 2 rearranged differently is the main one I think). Such a small difference out of the big whole on a small structural/molecular scale can have huge impact on the outcome. You insert a salmon gene into a tomato and make it last longer, less spoilage, it's huge difference, but you only inserted 1 gene out of thousands.
4. It doesn't make sense really to have different brain structures for male/female. We share many same organs thankfully and those structures are the same. It has to be similar enough for reproduction.
5. What drives masculine/feminine behaviors or patterns? Societal expectations/environment or biology? As an amateur, I'd hypothesize both. Not sure how much you know about genetics, but there's epigenetics (gene regulation, chromatin modifications) and genetics (the raw ATCG letters for instruction). We know genetics drives epigenetic changes, and epigenetic changes drive genetic changes, it's a 2 way street. Perhaps biology drives the types of societies we construct but the influences of our ever changing society (new technologies disrupting social behavior like contraception, social media, etc) also influence our biology and behavior and we're more free to adopt whatever we chose. The people you surround yourself with, exposed to, (as others alluded) and their expectations b]could[/b] shape your core beliefs of how to live and what's masculine/feminine. So maybe we should be PC to everyone including haters, can't blame'em really, some are products of sad, unfortunate circumstances.
6. Following question 5, maybe it's what the brain is exposed to in terms of hormones/neurotransmitters that drives differences in evolutionary behaviors? Perhaps the different exposures primarily stemming from different sex chromosome 23 drive "male" and "female" brain. And outside of sex chromosomes, maybe genomic imprinting (if i understood genomic imprinting correctly)?
7. What is "male-end" or "female-end"? How was it defined? Maybe the parameters chosen weren't representative of male or female. I think in clinic, how/what you measure is as important as the quantity of the measurement itself. They said watching talk shows was highly gender-stereotyped, I had no idea?! Same w/video games. But did they go deeper and say "types of videogames" in that dataset they picked to analyze? Maybe we play different games? Are there a lot of female Halo, COD fans, Doom fans out there? How does this field study these topics? Is it considered acceptable? (considering it's PNAS, I'd probably say yes but idk myself, higher IF journals doesn't
always mean good research)
8. What about differences in electrical pathways or signaling patterns. Structure and layout of the roads could be very similar but maybe how the roads are used are different?
9.
"The low degree of internal consistency observed here in the human brain agrees well with studies demonstrating that humans often possess both “masculine” and “feminine” psychological characteristics (that is, personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors that show sex/gender differences)" - this makes sense to me. I always wondered why gays are found in almost any culture (but visibility of course will vary). I thought there was a genetic component. Cause I remember Tyler Clementi and his brother were gay. 2 for 2 for a trait not common..could be chance or something more. But if gays were allowed to be free and roam, wouldn't they die out? Because they can't make kids? So my point is I think there's some evolutionary advantage for males to have some female traits, and females to have some male traits, otherwise we'd be strictly all one or the other. Maybe because not all parents live long. One might die, so it's advantageous to have a single parent that can do both male and female?
Some are more male/female than others and there's nothing wrong w/that IMO, though I think everyone gets flamed for being different. But even among gays, there's a "male/female" among the same relationship dynamic right? The pitcher and the catcher, ship and its port. There's probably an evolutionary advantage for this relationship type dynamic otherwise it wouldn't be so persistent and pervasive. With new technologies and changing environment, that's slowly changing, for better or for worse, it just is. (this is probably just in my head but I've seen power couples/DINKs or more equal relationships, where traditional male/female relationships are discarded and they don't seem to have as many kids or any kids compared to what might be thought of as traditional couple power dynamics, but you can't pin it down to brain/biology, could be other factors like maybe reproduction is no longer high priority cause there's so much to do now than before, other ways to invest time and $$ besides kids that we didn't have before. I guess I'm thinking of those old, traditional, religious Christian/Muslim/Jewish couples that have like 4-13 kids, the more kids they had, the more likely it seemed they were religious and had traditional beliefs of male/female, but I don't know why or if that's even real difference). Maybe more equitable more likely you'll die out and won't pass your DNA?
10. The study only looks at people alive today, and in certain cultures (mostly Western I assume). I'm betting across cultures, it's the same and probably in the past, but pre-civilization, you technically can't rule out differences, though I feel certain the result would've been reproducible.
"most humans possess a mosaic of personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors, some more common in males compared with females, others more common in females compared with males, and still others common in both females and males." - pretty much. I'm not completely sold on non-dimorphic you mentioned though cause there are limitations (as w/any study) and there's a lot we don't know still. I don't think brain structure is the defining barrier between male/female but there are strong patterns of behaviors in males/females but it's a pattern, not a law of nature. Just b/c we don't know yet doesn't mean it's out there. I guess in the past, it was more clearly defined and oppressive, but now that we're more open and PC, we see more people emerge as "queer?" That we're not as different as previously thought, but still obviously different.