Large cross-cultural studies of human psychologyโattempts to document our geographically varying ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving around the worldโare becoming more common. Also becoming more common are reports from such studies showing something rather unexpected: Psychological differences between women and men are often the largestย in cultures that are the most genderย egalitarian.
To help people understand how evolved sex differences can vary across cultures, perhaps the easiest attribute to consider is the presumably โevolvedโ sex difference in human height. Although men are generally taller than women (on average), the degree of this difference is highly culturally variable (and can be very small in someย populations).
…
Share this article
Well, in this case, the cultural variation in sex differences in height likely stems, in part, from harshย socioecologiesย reducing the size of the observed sex difference. This is because menโs height appears to be more deleteriously affected by poorย nutritionย and disease than is womenโs height. As Gaulin and Boster (1992) noted in their review of sex differences in stature across 155 human societies, โsubstandard nutrition could cause individuals to fall short of their genetically set growth potential, and, importantly, males seem to be more sensitive to such developmental perturbations than femalesโ (p. 474). This often happens with sexually-selected features, which are, by design, difficult to generate (Geary,ย 2021), though it’s certainly not the case that men show greaterย phenotypic plasticityย orย differential susceptibilityย to allย environmental inputs.
