Sex differences in moral judgements across 67 countries

Abstract

Most of the empirical research on sex differences and cultural variations in morality has relied on within-culture analyses or small-scale cross-cultural data. To further broaden the scientific understanding of sex differences in morality, the current research relies on two international samples to provide the first large-scale examination of sex differences in moral judgements nested within cultures. Using a sample from 67 countries (Study 1; n = 336 691), we found culturally variable sex differences in moral judgements, as conceptualized by Moral Foundations Theory. Women consistently scored higher than men on Care, Fairness, and Purity. By contrast, sex differences in Loyalty and Authority were negligible and highly variable across cultures. Country-level sex differences in moral judgements were also examined in relation to cultural, socioeconomic, and gender-equality indicators revealing that sex differences in moral judgements are larger in individualist, Western, and gender-equal societies. In Study 2 (19 countries; n = 11 969), these results were largely replicated using Bayesian multi-level modelling in a distinct sample. The findings were robust when incorporating cultural non-independence of countries into the models. Specifically, women consistently showed higher concerns for Care, Fairness, and Purity in their moral judgements than did men. Sex differences in moral judgements were larger in individualist and gender-equal societies with more flexible social norms. We discuss the implications of these findings for the ongoing debate about the origin of sex differences and cultural variations in moral judgements as well as theoretical and pragmatic implications for moral and evolutionary psychology.

Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins

“…Moreover, men, on average, tend to prefer power, resources, and being feared, while women tend to prefer status, being respected, and loved (Hays, 2013). Such overall patterns in leadership are consistent with the sex-typical psychobehavioral strengths of women with regard to empathy, people orientation, care and health orientation, emotional expression, and sense of fairness and purity-and of men with regard to risk-taking, competitiveness, systemizing, the Dark Triad traits, physical aggression, violence, pain tolerance, and lack of fearfulness, shame, and guilt (Geary, 2010;Varella et al, 2016;Archer, 2019;Atari et al, 2020;Luoto, 2020;Prichard and Christman, 2020).…”

“…While some hold the position that socialization into gender roles causes sex differences in humans, this hypothesis is generally not supported when considering the biological, developmental, neuroscientific, and cross-national evidence more broadly (Christov-Moore et al, 2014;Schmitt, 2015;Janicke et al, 2016;Archer, 2019;Del Giudice, 2019;Luoto et al, 2019a;Liu et al, 2020;Stoet and Geary, 2020). In fact, cross-national evidence indicates that in more gender-egalitarian countries, sex differences are of a higher magnitude than in less genderegalitarian countries, which is the opposite of what the gender role hypothesis would predict (Schmitt et al, 2008;Falk and Hermle, 2018;Atari et al, 2020;Stoet and Geary, 2020; see also Breda et al, 2020) 9 . Furthermore, since evolutionary processes pre-date social conceptualizations of gender roles by several million years, a complete explanation of the interplay between social conceptions of gender roles and evolved biological predispositions would need to account for how evolutionary processes act as precursors to gender roles (Janicke et al, 2016;Sweet-Cushman, 2016;Archer, 2019).…”

“…A meta-analysis of 85 studies on sex differences in protective behaviors in response to respiratory epidemics and pandemics pre-COVID-19 showed that women were 50% more likely than men to adopt/practice non-pharmaceutical behaviors, such as hand washing, face mask use, and avoidance of public transport ( Moran and Del Valle, 2016 ). A study unrelated to the pandemic context reported that across 67 countries, women showed higher dislike for the suffering of others, as well as more concern about physical and spiritual purity and contamination than men ( Atari et al, 2020 ). Moreover, women with obsessive-compulsive disorder present more contamination/cleaning symptoms while male patients present more sexual-religious and aggressive symptoms ( Mathis et al, 2011 ).…”

Moral Reasoning about Aggressive Behavior in Relation to Type of Aggression, Age and Gender in South Korean Pupils

“…These gender differences are similar to those reported in some Western studies [ 21 ]. This is the same tendency in which females showed consistently higher scores than males on care, fairness, and purity across 67 countries [ 45 ].…”

Pandemic leadership: Sex differences and their evolutionary–developmental origins

“…A meta-analysis of 85 studies on sex differences in protective behaviors in response to respiratory epidemics and pandemics pre-COVID-19 showed that women were 50% more likely than men to adopt/practice non-pharmaceutical behaviors, such as hand washing, face mask use, and avoidance of public transport (Moran and Del Valle, 2016). A study unrelated to the pandemic context reported that across 67 countries, women showed higher dislike for the suffering of others, as well as more concern about physical and spiritual purity and contamination (Atari et al, 2020). Moreover, women with obsessive-compulsive disorder present more contamination/cleaning symptoms while male patients present more sexual-religious and aggressive symptoms (Mathis et al, 2011).…”