The psychology of sex.

The gender similarities hypothesis.

“…Reviews of research on psychological gender differences began with Woolley's (1914) and Hollingworth's (1918) and extended through Maccoby and Jacklin's (1974) watershed book The Psychology of Sex Differences, in which they reviewed more than 2,000 studies of gender differences in a wide variety of domains, including abilities, personality, social behavior, and memory. Maccoby and Jacklin dismissed as unfounded many popular beliefs in psychological gender differences, including beliefs that girls are more "social" than boys; that girls are more suggestible; that girls have lower self-esteem; that girls are better at rote learning and simple tasks, whereas boys are better at higher level cognitive processing; and that girls lack achievement motivation.…”

Gender

“…In the first review of the literature on gender differences in psychology, Woolley (1914) pointed out and deplored the gap between the predominant views on the question including that of scientists, versus the conclusions supported by data. Hyde (2005, page 581) cites Woolley (1914, page 372) as "The general discussion of the psychology of sex, whether by psychologists or by sociologists show such a wide diversity of points of view that one feels that the truest thing to be said at present is that scientific evidence plays very little part in producing convictions."…”

The measurement of masculinity and femininity: Engendering categorical realities

“…In his comprehensive review of sex difference research, Havelock Ellis (1894) noted the ideological distortions frequently imposed on the subject For these ideological biases, Elhs prescribed the remedy of empirical inquiry, particularly the "new" scientific psychology which "lays the axe at the root of many pseudoscientific superstitions' (p 513) However, he cautioned that science reveals only factual, not potential, conditions, for "our present knowledge of men and women cannot tell us what they might be or what they ought to be, but what they actually are, under the conditions of civilization" (p 513) Within a decade, numerous American psychologists had taken up the question of sex differences While acknowledging the precedent of Elhs's work, they professed closer ahgnment with the empirical spirit of providing what Helen Thompson Woolley (1903) described as the "original investigation" that his study lacked (p 2) As did many of her cohorts, Thompson Woolley reached somewhat different conclusions than Ellis, for though she admonished pseudoscientific theorizing and anticipated the fruits of objective experimentation, she believed that modifications m social life could or would alter psychological sex differences With agreement on the correct methods for knowledge acquisition, Ellis and Thompson Woolley disagreed on whether or not the psychology of the sexes might change, or be perfected, with the former betting on nature's desires and the latter on the effects of social organization Nevertheless, the psychologist's task was not to explore the dvnamics of social perfectibility but to better the process of knowledge production The normative notion of bettering gender arrangements was taken to be another problem altogether Thompson Woolley's careful laboratory research resembles a host of similar studies, many of them conducted by women (such as Marv Whiton Calkins, Leta Holhngworth, Cathenne Cox Miles, and Margaret Floy Washburn) who, with the new opportunities for higher education, turned to intellectual questions that were not far removed from their own lives (Rosenberg, 1982) Thompson Woolley's dissertation (1903) reported expenments on sex differences in motor, affective, sensory, and intellectual abilities Within the next three decades hundreds of studies assessed these sex differences as well as those to be found in the association of ideas, color preference, handwriting, remembering of advertisements and moving pictures, motor efficiency, nervous behavior of nursery school children fear responses, reading speed, credulity regarding fortune telhng, stammering, scope of attention, reasoning, and ideals and tastes, not to mention knowledge of psychology after the first course (see Allen, 1927, 1930, Holhngworth, 1916, 1918, Johnson & Terman 1940, Thompson Woollev, 1910, 1914 The research on the psychology of sex created some confusion because many of the studies reported no or minor sex differences and those finding differences often indicated female superiority Probably no study equalled the impact of the intelhgence research as measured by the new mental tests In revising the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, Lewis Terman (1917) tested 1,000 children and found slight superiority of girls The results led him to consider why women had not att...…”