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The Division of Personality is Limited by the Division of Labor
Here is the abstract to Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures.
Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development--including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth--were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men's personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.
Unlike the authors, I don't find it unintuitive that personality differences between men and women increase in developed economies. All personality differences increase in developed economies. If Robin Williams Chris Rock (see comments) were a Bangladeshi rice farmer he might still be funny but he'd also have to be a hard-working, diligent rice farmer and that would push his personality closer to the mean of all rice farmers. The division of labor both opens up the possibility of becoming who you truly are and it magnifies and extends who you can be.
Hat tip to Robin Hanson.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on January 11, 2008 at 07:16 AM | Permalink
Comments
So maybe a better title is: "The Division of Personality is Limited by the Extent of the Market."
Posted by: Mike/KP at Jan 11, 2008 7:36:40 AM
Oh, God, no! You didn't just write the plot for a new Robin Williams movie did you? Why?!!!
Posted by: pwgerr at Jan 11, 2008 7:40:35 AM
Sounds like it supports Von Humboldt's thesis in The Limits of the State.
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Jan 11, 2008 8:19:25 AM
Unlike TC, I don't find Robin Williams funny.
Posted by: Lucas at Jan 11, 2008 8:20:42 AM
Unlike AT, sorry.
Posted by: Lucas at Jan 11, 2008 8:21:48 AM
"Robin Williams might still be funny" is a bit like saying "Root canals might still be popular."
Posted by: Steve R at Jan 11, 2008 8:28:11 AM
"If Robin Williams were a Bangladeshi rice farmer he might still be funny but he'd also have to be a hard-working, diligent rice farmer and that would push his personality closer to the mean of all rice farmers."
Really? So if he were working in a cube in some corporate campus, he'd be more funny? I wasn't aware that 'the mean of all cube workers' level of humor' > 'the mean of all rice farmers' level of humor.'
Posted by: meter at Jan 11, 2008 9:10:25 AM
Note that I have corrected the Robin Williams error!
Posted by: Alex Tabarrok at Jan 11, 2008 9:19:46 AM
An interesting counterpoint is this paper:
Cable Television Raises Women's Status in India
Robert Jensen and Emily Oster
"The villages that added cable were associated with improvements in measures of women's autonomy, a reduction in the number of situations in which wife beating was deemed acceptable, and a reduction in the likelihood of wanting the next child to be a boy."
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W13305
After villages were exposed to western lifestyles, e.g. via soap operas, women were treated more equally.
These soap operas, in particular, generally depict urban environments in which, relative to rural areas, women are more likely to work outside the home, control money and have high levels of education.
They don't measure the same things and aren't necessarily contradictory, but FWIW, the physical safety, freedom, attitudes and economic autonomy measured in the NBER study seem a lot more important than the subtler personality traits in the psychology study.
Posted by: A student of economics at Jan 11, 2008 10:29:35 AM
I hope you were able to contact the authors and provide this explanation. Raising the economic literacy of all is the duty of the academic economist.
Posted by: Macneil at Jan 11, 2008 10:31:32 AM
"If Robin Williams Chris Rock (see comments) were a Bangladeshi rice farmer he might still be funny but he'd also have to be a hard-working, diligent rice farmer and that would push his personality closer to the mean of all rice farmers."
See, I'm not quite sure if one has anything to do with the other. Perhaps in this situation, but is there a big personality difference between, say, a US auto worker and a Bangladeshi rice farmer, that is CAUSED by their occupation differences?
It seems more likely to me that greater wealth=greater diversification in media outlets=greater diversification in media consumption=greater difference in personality. But that's just a winged hypothesis, so who knows?
Posted by: Robert Olson at Jan 11, 2008 11:13:01 AM
What is counterintuitive - and indeed, unscientific - is the researchers’ interpretation of their findings. Let me see if I understand this (I haven’t read the article, so I can only go by your synopsis). They found differences in personality traits among men and women, and differences in the level of difference between genders, across countries. This variation would suggest to most social scientists – who focus on observable evidence – that personality traits are socio-culturally determined across the board. They would then look at features of the cultural landscape in different social contexts (including the influence of the mass media, different methods of childrearing, etc.), seeking to determine how different personality traits are encouraged or discouraged amongst men and women.
Instead, the authors assume, evidently without basis, that INNATE gender differences exist, and that these, moreover, are no longer socioculturally determined in some countries but rather their expression is somehow “freed” there from cultural influences. The chain of logic linking collective (national) wealth and “egalitarianism” to some kind of psychological liberation in which culture no longer shapes personality is missing some key links, to put it mildly. But far more problematic is the fundamental assumption – which, again, doesn’t seem to be based on anything in the data – that gender differences in personality traits are innate to begin with.
Isn’t this a little like saying “We’ve found that black people and white people have closer intelligence scores in areas where science is not developed and that the differences among the two groups increase in more scientifically advanced countries. We interpret this data as showing that innate differences in intelligence – reflected in the findings in the more scientifically-developed countries – are attenuated in more low-tech environments and expressed with greater clarity in scientifically-advanced societies”?
Posted by: SC at Jan 11, 2008 11:35:45 AM
I think the consulsion makes sense if you believe in Maslow's Hierarchy of
Needs.
Only after you take care of basic needs can you then address self-esteem needs and then self-actualization needs.
If David Cross (who is
funny) were a Bangladeshi rice farmer, and he was wondering if he could feed himself and his family then he wouldn't have time to ponder things like how morally twisted he was to drink alcohol with gold leaf in it.
Posted by: GA at Jan 11, 2008 11:47:09 AM
Alex's point is spot on.
BTW, I've always hated Robin Williams, though Best of Times is a great movie.
As for Chris Rock, maybe one more try . . .?
How about Larry Fine?
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Jan 11, 2008 12:52:34 PM
Hmm. Greater wealth leads to greater expression of sexual personality traits. One of these is female neuroticism. Thus the richer the society the more female neuroticism we shall see.
Good Grief! Amanda Marcotte is right! It really is capitalism causing anorexia, female body image problems and the rest. Not for the reasons she thinks, to be sure, but it is capitalism that produces the wealth, isn't it?
Better switch to socialism quickly...as long as we can be certain that it works in reverse as well, falling wealth reducing the number of neurotic women.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Jan 11, 2008 1:05:43 PM
So you're telling me more money makes women relatively more emotionally unstable? We needed a cross-cultural study to demonstrate this? ;)
Posted by: Joey at Jan 11, 2008 1:32:30 PM
SC makes an interesting point: rich countries having a greater separation between the genders' personalities doesn't by itself prove that this is nature shining through.
A way to show this would be to also study the spread of personalities within each gender. Perhaps they already have the data to to so? If this is also wider in rich countries, and I am sure it would be, then it would be hard to claim that the spread between genders is enforced by stronger social pressure in rich countries.
Black vs white is very different, as the degree of mixing will vary so much.
Posted by: improbable at Jan 11, 2008 2:11:42 PM
SC, the main reason for thinking gender differences in personality are innate is that there have been numerous cases in which a boy had his penis removed (botched circumcisions and birth defects) and was raised as a girl. They don't turn out like girls.
Posted by: TGGP at Jan 11, 2008 2:32:24 PM
A better link is this one: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2813gender.html
Posted by: TGGP at Jan 11, 2008 2:41:42 PM
But in societies that are *not* "prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian," there exist significant divisions of labor--particularly between genders. So, as the societies become more egalitarian, any particular category of labor will be more inclined to contain both men and women. If people of both genders can specialize in being comedians, or rice farmers, wouldn't you expect each of these groups to share certain personality traits within itself, regardless of gender/
The conclusion is still counterintuitive to me.
Posted by: david foster at Jan 11, 2008 4:34:23 PM
SC says:
"What is counterintuitive - and indeed, unscientific - is the researchers’ interpretation of their findings ... This variation would suggest to most social scientists – who focus on observable evidence – that personality traits are socio-culturally determined across the board. They would then look at features of the cultural landscape in different social contexts (including the influence of the mass media, different methods of childrearing, etc.), seeking to determine how different personality traits are encouraged or discouraged amongst men and women."
I fear this is no better than Tyler's explanation by SC's own criteria. The evidence says that there are differences. The evidence in this experiment does not say anything about whether they are culturally determined or born in. Many of folks here seem to think it is clear, and already proven that there are inborn traits. Many Social Scientists seem to start from the position that there are not inborn traits. In neither assumption of inborn-ness nor assumption of socialized features is the assumption "scientific". the assumption is a start point, and different folks are starting from different priors, both sets of whom think are justified elsewhere.
Posted by: kyle at Jan 11, 2008 4:40:47 PM
That's precisely what I was going to say (david). It doesn't disprove Alex's hypothesis, that all differences are magnified, therefore whatever sex-differences exist are magnified. However it does make it seem rather odd. I'd like to see the differences between, say, Saudi Arabia and Japan, both countries where economically women are strongly pushed into particular roles, and places like Sweden or India where this pressure may be lower.
All in all, I can't help seeing a very shallow economic interpretation of a much more complex social phenomenon.
Posted by: Tim at Jan 11, 2008 4:54:01 PM
I’ll make this as brief as possible. The PBS piece deals with a single, anecdotal case, and we all know how useful personal testimonials are in making broad claims in science. If this person had emerged as a happy, well-adjusted women, that wouldn’t prove Money’s case, just as his experience doesn’t allow anyone to make general claims about biological differences. It is perfectly reasonable to imagine that many others in that situation had very different experiences. Most important, though, is that this one – again, single case – addresses gender identity, not personality. It says nothing about the five aspects of personality of concern to the study we’re talking about. (And I can’t resist suggesting that his personality, while it may have been unfeminine in Canada, may well have resembled the normal personality of girls in, say, Bangladesh. As the study at hand shows, there is a great deal of variation on this score.)
One of the interviewees makes clear that:
“This established sex difference in the brain is an anatomical difference, and quite frankly no one knows what it means in terms of behavior. It might well have something to do with the different kinds of physiology involved with the production of sperm versus the production of eggs. There's no evidence that it has to do with behavior per se, which doesn't mean to say there might not be some evidence in the future. But at the moment no one really knows what that little group of cells does.”
The companion web site to the story (and especially the parts by Anne Fausto-Sterling), moreover, suggests a very complicated picture, and one that would certainly rule out any a priori assumptions about gender, biology, and behavior.
In any case, Kyle, you do not have to assume that personality differences between men and women are entirely cultural artifacts to recognize the flaw in their interpretation of their findings: they take as axiomatic something which they have offered no valid scientific reason to take as axiomatic. Not only are innate differences assumed, baselessly, but they proclaim the cases in which these differences seem the most pronounced to be “natural,” then seek to explain why these natural differences do not exist elsewhere. And their OWN DATA show broad variation in these personality traits amongst and between men and women. Unless you’re going to make an absurd argument that the nation into which one is born affects one’s biology in such a way as to cause these differences, they have to be caused by some sort of sociocultural differences.
I should note that the irony of this is that people who wanted to show how natural the differences between genders were used to point to gender differences in “primitive” societies, assuming that these existed in something closer to some imagined “state of nature.” (Of course, examples were always carefully chosen: rarely were examples that challenged their stereotypes mentioned.) Now, when faced with data that suggests that gender differences in one area are less pronounced in more “traditional” societies, they turn around and suggest that these do not allow for “natural” differences to be expressed. Oy vay.
I think that the race analogy I made earlier is perfectly valid, but for the fact that, unlike gender, racial constructs have no biological reality.
Posted by: SC at Jan 11, 2008 6:00:14 PM
Contrary to feminist theory, people like being male or female, and the richer they get the more they can indulge in their sex-specific desires.
What we see is that teenage girls who a century ago would have been going to bed early because they had to get up and milk the cows are now staying up late and taking half-undressed pictures of themselves on their cellphone cameras to post on the Internet. Meanwhile, their brothers, who would have been exhausted after a day behind the plow, are staying up late to look at pictures posted by girls (hopefully, not on the same website) and play World of Warcraft.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jan 11, 2008 7:51:49 PM
Really? Racial 'constructs' have no biological reality? Indeed, the average genetic variation between races is much less than the average variation between two individuals of the same race. But white couples don't have white children? Black coulpes don't have black children? No biological reality?
Posted by: mtc at Jan 11, 2008 9:04:06 PM
