Sex differences in
personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this
area has suffered from significant methodological limitations. We advance a set
of guidelines for overcoming those limitations: (a) measure personality with a
higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five; (b) estimate sex
differences on latent factors; and (c) assess global sex differences with
multivariate effect sizes. We then apply these guidelines to a large,
representative adult sample, and obtain what is presently the best estimate of
global sex differences in personality.
Methodology/Principle Findings
Personality measures
were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire.
Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on
individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a
multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D).
We found a global effect size D
= 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female
distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the
global effect size was D
= 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological
standards.
Significance
The idea that there
are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and
females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.
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Del
Giudice, M., Booth, T., & Irwing, P. (2012). The Distance Between Mars and Venus:
Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality. PLoS ONE.
Original article can be obtained in PDF here:
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