Language in non-standard groups

Draft dated 12/3/08:
I.E. Sommer has undertaken an interesting approach to studying neural differences in language between men and women. Sommer has been an author on a few studies using non-standard subjects in language fMRI tests. Sommer et al (2008) compared the language activations of FTM and MTF transsexuals (before and after hormone treatments) to detect hormonal effects. Van Rijn et al (2008) (including Sommer) examined language activations in men with an additional X chromosome.

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I'm on vacation until Jan 5. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy seeing these drafts that languished, uncompleted, over the past year. Happy holidays!

Major Themes in Gender Difference

Undated draft
Possible Major Themes identified over two years of differenceblog:
Competitive vs. Collaborative
Visual vs. Auditory
Linear vs. Lateral thought
Math vs. Verbal
Assortative mating: importance of success vs importance of youth
Self-esteem
Depression
Systematizing vs. Empathizing
Emotional intelligence

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I'm on vacation until Jan 5. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy seeing these drafts that languished, uncompleted, over the past year. Happy holidays!

Adult Crying

9/18/08: International Study on Adult Crying. See Becht and Vingerhoets (2002)
Also ScienceDaily (12/19/08) notes new findings released by Rottenberg Bylsma (with Vingerhoets) that highlight the difficulty of laboratory experiments on the physiological effects of crying.

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I'm on vacation until Jan 5. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy seeing these drafts that languished, uncompleted, over the past year. Happy holidays!

Mate Choice

Draft dated 2/19/08: Addressing a possible weakness in evolutionary psychological models, Mata et al (2005) argue for an agent-based model, rather than attitude-based, model of mate-choice.

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I'm on vacation until Jan 5. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy seeing these drafts that languished, uncompleted, over the past year. Happy holidays!

XKCD and DBLOG

Draft dated 12/7/07: This was planned as the holiday filler for last year


Are men or women more likely to report trouble remembering the day, month, year?
Story about my sister's birthday


Instant Messenger use. Emoticon use.
Story about zen hugs.

Discussion of gender differences on XKCD forum (11/26/07) - check comic near that date. (comic 11/26/07 - unrelated?)

Images licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. by Randall Munroe

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I'm on vacation until Jan 5. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy seeing these drafts that languished, uncompleted, over the past year. Happy holidays!

Caffeine

According to a ScienceDaily (2008) article: "Caffeine Has Greater Effect On Men, And Starts Only Ten Minutes After Consumption." What Adan et al (2008) found is possibly not that clear. In a group of undergraduates (average age = 22), drinking coffee increased self-reported alertness and positive affect in men to a greater degree than in women. Alertness was recorded three times, by questionnaire, in thirty minutes. They also found an alertness effect for decaffeinated coffee which was more pronounced in women. Participants were permitted to sweeten their coffee with up to 7g of sugar (about 3 lifesavers, or about 2 ounces of cranberry juice cocktail), but sugar consumption was not calculated as a variable.

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Looking back over past caffeine-related posts (see below) I notice that all the studies showing a protective effect for coffee seem to be retrospective, and tend to show greater protective effects for women. However, the August 2007 article mentions that a specific gene phenotype is associated with more caffeine-induced mood elevation in men than in women. This makes me wonder if there's some other mood-elevating confound for which coffee consumption is a marker that has a neuroprotective effect, rather than the coffee consumption itself. The fact that Adan et al decided to neglect the possible elevating effect of sugar baffles me, and makes me very skeptical of other studies I may have reported due to seeing them on ScienceDaily.

Vacation Notice: Regular posts will resume on January 5th. In the meantime, I'll be sharing some drafts that got started, but never developed into full posts during the last year. Feel free to comment, because I felt like these were interesting topics, but I probably won't respond until next year. Happy holidays!

See also:
Why Wait: 11/12/07
Even more caffeine: 8/10/07
Instant Human: 6/12/07

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U.S. City Rankings 2008: Men's/Women's Health

The annual ratings of the healthiness of U.S. Cities for men and women have been released by the magazine Men's Health (2008) and spin-off Women's Health (2008). Madison, WI was named the overall best city for men, while Salt Lake City, UT was rated best for women. San Jose and Anaheim, CA topped the "healthiest" lists for both men and women.

The two features are very much written in tandem. The Women's Health article notes: "women don’t live in a vacuum--they also want to know where the healthiest, happiest, and fittest men reside". Perhaps reflecting the spin-off/spin-ee relationship, the Men's Health article doesn't link to the women's list, although the maps are identically formatted, including links between the two.

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The stylistic differences between the two articles are what I really wanted to point out, here. The men's article opens with a rhetorical question: "Is there a more romantic icon than the songwriter enamored of the road?" The women's, with a sentence I can't really classify: "We’re huge fans of GPS technology, but it’s pretty much useless if you want to pinpoint the Best & Worst Cities for Women." Is that a joke? A complaint? A veiled insult? The men's article is full of bullet points, lists, subheadings. The women's article is a lot shorter, and talks mostly about shortcomings in other lists, and then veers off to promote the men's list.

Am I reading too much into this? Perhaps it's just the 21-year old magazine's established style is more comfortable to me than the 3-year-old spin-off's product placement.

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Ice-related falling injuries

U.S. Snow Depth map courtesy Weather Underground

According to an analysis by Swedish researchers Björnstig et al (1997), women over 50 are the most frequently injured by snow/ice related falling injuries, with a third of all such injuries affecting this group. Although the injury frequency rates are largely even by gender for people under 50, two other spikes stand out: men aged 20-29, and girls aged 10-19. However, while this Swedish study found a large variation by sex in the oldest group (more than 2:1), a Norwegian study (Bulajic-Kopjar, 2000) found no difference in these injury rates between men and women aged 65 and older. In the United States, Bischoff-Ferrari et al's (2007) study of all fall-related fractures in persons over 65 found multiple interesting patterns: hip fractures decreased in with snowfall, but all other fracture risks increased. Barrett et al (1999) note that older women (especially those of European descent) are at more risk for fracture in general, partially due to their longevity.

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It seems like the same winter storm swept across the northern half of the continent this weekend, and walking to work this morning was a bit of an adventure. I did the ice dance once, but didn't fall. Yet. I think I fall once every winter, because it doesn't seem worth it to me to go carefully enough that I won't. I imagine that the risk-benefit analysis on this will change when I feel like a fall is likely to cause me more than injured pride. Usually the worst that happens to me is skinned palms.

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Infidelity Prevalence

Blow and Hartnett's 2005 review examines self-reported infidelity in an attempt to get estimate the actual prevalence of the phenomenon. One major confound is the reporting differences between men and women, which are very likely to be profound (see 8/13/07): women are less likely to admit to having extra-marital affairs. However, as previously discussed, there is a strong sense that men are more likely to desire multiple partners than women (see related, below). For a specific figure, they cite Laumann et al's 1994 book: The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, which says that 25% of married men and 15% of married women report having had extramarital sex.

Blow and Hartnett conclude that (US-only) extramarital sex "occurs in less than 25% of committed relationships, and more men than women appear to be engaging in infidelity." However, they also note that gender differences in infidelity appear to vary widely between cultures.

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Cheating is the topic of my weekly poll (a feature on my personal blog), and while I've covered differences in sexual appetites several times, I didn't think I'd ever presented an estimate of infidelity prevalence. Honestly, that's a hell of a lot lower than I would have guessed, and I think it's a lower bound. I don't see any likelihood that someone is going to report infidelity that has not occured, but I see a number of reasons why they would not report infidelity that had. I know I have a great deal of observer bias on the subject, as well as a non-normative sample, but it's always seemed to me like more than half of relationships have some cheating.

related posts:
Adultery Gap, 10/28/08
Marital and Extra-marital sex, 9/18/08
Evolutionary Psychology 101, 5/30/07
The Jealous Type, 10/25/06

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Angry or Happy?

The author's "angry"
userpic, circa 2002
(pre-hormones)

Picture an angry face. Now: is that face male or female?

According to a poll on the blog Cognitive Daily (2008), most readers pictured a male angry face, consistently with the results of Becker et al's (2007) study which found that not only were subjects more likely to identify men as angry and women as happy, but they were more likely to identify angry faces as men, and happy faces as women. The authors suggest that this may be due to anatomical differences between men's and women's faces: as the CogDaily post notes: "maybe men's typically larger brow and thinner lips compared to women just look a little angrier".

However, this result has not been universally found, which explains Becker et al's title: "The confounded nature of angry men and happy women." For example, Hess et al (2004) found that female faces were rated as angrier. Trnka et al (2007) found no gender difference in the accuracy of emotional ratings of faces. Perhaps most interestingly, none of these studies reported a difference by rater gender: women did not show a tendency for more accurate ratings of other people's emotions.

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In a conversation about other people's perceptions last night, I said: "I always make my 'non-threatening' roll." I feel like I get angry a lot, but I don't think people see it on me very often. Even when they do, they don't take it very seriously. From a strictly physical threat point-of-view, this makes a lot of sense. I'm slightly built and short. I do not pose a physical threat to most people. There are ways in which this is an advantage. I have used this to defuse uncomfortable situations in bars by intervening where someone else would have escalated it. Generally, however, I mostly feel like I'm not taken seriously. Luckily, most of the time I'm not serious.

In terms of gender differences, I have noticed that anger seems like a more default condition since starting testosterone therapy, and I was surprised that none of the studies seemed to mention hormonal differences on mood. However, I didn't read any of them as carefully as I wanted to, so if you see something about testosterone in one of them, please draw it to my attention.

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Object naming

Last month (11/7/08), we looked at studies that found an advantage for women in naming household plants, and other objects in an array, which prompted one reader to ask for more on this topic.

Sex differences in object-naming by category have been proposed to be related to what we've called the "people vs. objects" dichotomy; women are supposed to be more attracted to people, while men are more interested in made things. Theoretically, this is a hunter-gatherer advantage. Laws et al (2000) found that women made more errors in naming non-living things while men made more errors in naming living things. Garn et al (2008) note that men's advantage in naming is especially pronounced when the exemplars are "tools." Garn et al's fMRI experiment found no differences in brain activation between men and women on object naming in general, although some differences appeared by category (different areas used for tools and plants by men and women).

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While it could be argued that the hunter-gatherer paradigm gives a reason for women to be better at plant identification, it doesn't make a lot of sense for women to be better at animals. The exemplars used by Laws included both, and the participants all had trouble with some of the line drawings, such as "celery" and "eagle". Honestly, if you're looking for me to make categorization errors, it's likely I would accidentally categorize "celery" as non-living. Just sayin'. I feel like these articles make it seem much more likely that categorical vocabulary advantages come from differentiated socialization rather than differences in ability.

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Internet vs. Sex

About a third of Americans questioned would rather give up sex than the internet for a two week span, according to an Intel-commissioned poll by Harris Interactive (CNN, 2008). Unsurprisingly, the poll found gender differences in the response rate, with 46% of women and 30% of men ready to give up sex to maintain their connection. According to the Intel Press Release (2008), 65% of respondents placed internet access at a 4 or 5 on a scale where "1 means 'completely expendable' and 5 means 'cannot live without it.'" It's worth noting that the Harris Interactive poll was conducted online.

Why would someone choose the internet over sex? Chou et al's 2005 review of internet addiction research points out that several authors have argued that sexual motivations may be a large part of compulsive internet use. On the other hand, most of the studies reviewed found that men were more likely than women to be internet addicted, although this was not universal (e.g. Young, 1998 - PDF).

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In my opinion, it's more likely that the results found by the Intel/Harris Interactive survey are related to a lesser commitment to sex in the short-term among women, and/or a reluctance to discuss a sexual deadline. Back in the day, two months was about my limit before I started to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Still, on a two week span, give me the internet. I use the internet several times every day; I don't have sex every day. I would notice the internet's absence a lot sooner. Then again, there's always a difference between not having something and not being allowed to have it.

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Women's incarceration rates

Rates of female incarceration, by state
from Frost et al, 2006

A story in today's Boston Globe (2008) that in New Hampshire, arrest rates for women are increasing faster than those for men -- 24% since 2004. Most of these women are arrested in response to drug- and alcohol-related crimes. A more in-depth article at the Union Leader (2008) also highlights the fact that the services available at women's facilities do not reach parity with male facilities, although there has been improvement since a study in 2004 ("Double Jeopardy") was released. However, it is worth noting that New Hampshire's female incarceration rate may still be well below the national average: Frost et al (2006, PDF) reported that New Hampshire ranked 47th out of 50 states in female incarcerations in 2004, with 18 female prisoners for 100,000 residents, making up less than 5% of the total prisoner population in the state.

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I find it incredibly frustrating that the study's responsible body (The New Hampshire Women's Policy Institute) doesn't link to the new study "Women Behind Bars" or the older one "Double Jeopardy". I spent some time looking for these two articles with no luck. If you happen to be able to find them, I'd like to see more than the journalistic take on their findings.

I'm not sure what we're really supposed to glean from the rates rising faster for women than men, but I feel like a few cases can make a huge difference when you're talking about numbers as small as 119 prisoners. It seems easier to fudge a 24% increase for 119 women than for 2,329 men (2004 prisoner populations for NH, from Frost et al).

related: 7/14/08: AZ group helps women transition from prison

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Gift Guides by Personality

Target.com's types			Amazon.com's types
Feminine Personality Types:	Masculine Personality Types		Gourmet
Corporate Diva	Office All-Star		Green Thumb
Domestic Goddess	Mr. Fix-it		College Student
Doting Grandma	Doting Grandpa		Happy Camper
Fashionista	Guy's Guy		Glamour Girl
Fun for Anyone	Fun for Anyone		Host and Hostess
Nature Lover	Outdoor Explorer		Busy Professional
Super Mom	Devoted Dad		Dude
Urban Gourmet	Urban Guy		Geek
Globe Trotter	Gadget Guru		The One Who Has Everything
Fitness Champion	King of Comedy		Do-It-Yourselfer
			Gearhead
			Gadgeteer
			Pet Lover
			Green Guru

A couple of months ago, I pointed out Wal-Mart's "Back to School" campaign (8/15/08). Last night I noticed Target.com's Gift Guides, which allow you to shop for "Her" or for "Him" by personality type. In contrast, Amazon.com's Gift Guide has mostly gender neutral "personalities", with a couple of clear exceptions. However, the gift organizer allows you to add "male" or "female" to the suggestion algorithm. You can also choose more than one type, although there does not appear to be any selections for intersections (such as "Pet Lover" + "Happy Camper" doesn't give you travel stuff for dogs).

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After the crap I gave Wal-Mart in August, it didn't feel fair to let Target off the hook. I was especially struck that men get to have senses of humor, while women get to exercise. Amazon's gift guide has steered me hilariously wrong in the past. You also enter a birth year for gift suggestions: Amazon suggested I get a four-year-old friend a set of wine goblets.

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Find out the day's topic before you read: follow diffblog on Twitter! Diffblog also available on LiveJournal. And many apologies for this table, which is pissing me off, SO MUCH!

The "Sex" vs "Gender" debate

Lee Ellis et al's Sex Differences: Summarizing a Century of Research (2008) describes itself as "the most comprehensive attempt to characterize what is known about how males and females differ (or fail to do so) yet assembled". The book summarizes, in almost 1,900 tables, the results of over 18,000 studies. The book declines to distinguish between "sex" and gender" for three reasons (given in the preface, p. xii):

1. "distinguishing sex from gender assumes that scientists know what aspects of male-femaleness are biological and what aspects are sociocultural"
2. "if human males and females have both a sex and a gender, what about other animals?"
3. "is gender is a dichotomous variable (male-female) or is it continuous (masculine-androgynous-feminine) ... [if it is continuous] logic would compel one to no longer use the word gender to refer to males or females"

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I myself tend to use the words sex and gender fairly interchangeably here, although I believe it's more out of literary laziness than out of any particular political or scientific agenda. However, I agree with Ellis et al's argument that the current distinction is not useful in a number of ways. Specifically, I know that I personally conceptualize masculinity and femininity as orthogonal, not continuous. Being more masculine does not necessarily make you less feminine. Now, my feelings on this may be partially politically motivated. I don't want to put a "zero" on the continuum, whether that zero is at either end or in the middle. But I also think it's possible to be both highly masculine and highly feminine simultaneously, or low-gendered altogether. The only way you get a continuum, in my mind, is by defining masculinity as non-femininity, and vice-versa.

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Hmm. I complained on TouchyTranny.com about how slow LiveJournal was at updating the syndicated feeds, and it mysteriously got better. I wonder if complaining here will make the feed update in a timely fashion. I doubt it, but it's worth a try. At very least, I want to apologize to my LJ readers for the fact that they've been receiving the daily post in the evenings lately.

Differences in Heart Care

Jneid et al (2008), in an article published Monday, report that women are still receiving diminished care relative to men following a heart attack. Women were less likely to receive aspirin or beta-blockers upon arrival at the hospital, and were also less likely to receive reperfusion (restoration of blood flow via a needle, which minimizes heart damage).

There seems to be continuing debate over whether the "evidence-based" therapies Jneid supports are as effective or as safe in women as they are in men. Ridker et al (2005) found that low-dose aspirin decreased stroke risk, but not heart attack risk, in women. A meta-analysis by Berger et al (2006) found similar risks and benefits in aspirin therapy for both men and women. Enriquez et al (2008) found no increased incidence of adverse drug reactions among women.

As discussed last year (see 2/20/07), an alternate theory is that women's increased mortality rate from heart attack is due to increased age and infirmity at the time of the attack. Jneid's study does show a sex difference in age and comorbities. However, Enriquez et al's group did not show this discrepancy, and still found significant difference in treatment.

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I'm reminded of a story in my family mythology. Apparently, my great-grandmother went to the doctor for a complaint, and was essentially told "well, you're 80, you shouldn't expect to be healthy." So she changed doctors, lied about her age, and got treatment. I will actually be surprised if I don't end up on something for my heart in the next 10 years or so. Testosterone therapy increases serum cholesterol, and my doctor occasionally expresses concern, although my levels are in the normal range for a man my age (and high for a woman my age). I do wonder if the difference in "normal" ranges has any effect on the difference in treatment.

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Gender differences in investment reactivity

The Nashville Business Journal (2008) reports that the current economic crisis has Americans most concerned about a steady income stream over their lifetime. The study, conducted by AXA Equitable Life Insurance (2008), polled 400 U.S. consumers (age 35-70, household income > $75k) found that men were more likely to have made changes in their investments in response to the economic downturn than women. However, women were more likely than men to rate items like "guaranteed lifetime income" and "protecting retirement income" as "extremely important." AXA Equitable's chief innovation officer Barbara Goodstein interpreted this result as increased conservatism in female investors: "Women are clearly focused on protecting retirement income and have been responding more conservatively as a result."

Ms. Goodman's reaction is consistent with third-party-risk-estimation models proposed by Eckel and Grossman (2002). Eckel and Grossman did find that women in their investment simulation were more risk-averse than men. More tellingly, perhaps, they found that both men and women underestimated other people's capacity for risk. Women especially were guessed to behave more conservatively than their actual behavior.

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Honestly, I don't feel like "moving" or "not moving" your money is a necessarily conservative or risky approach, because you don't know what criteria the investors are basing these decisions on. What strikes me is the question of whether women used more "very important" ratings in general than men. That is, were men and women using the same scale when they rated the importance of items. The AXA Equitable report doesn't mention any category that men listed as more important, which leads me to speculate that these were not forced-rank choices. Further, I'd speculate that women will typically rate more items as "important", due to socialization pressures that make it more okay to express emotion.

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Adults and Video Games

A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Lenhart et al, 2008) reports that the gap between male and female "gamers" is much lower than previously thought: 55% of men vs. 50% of women. "Gamers" referred, in this survey, to:

any respondent who reported playing games online and/or said he used any one or more of the following devices to play games: desktop or laptop computer, game console, cell phone, Blackberry, some other handheld organizer or a portable gaming device.

The entire 5% difference could be accounted for by the use of gaming consoles, which 35% of men reported using compared to 21% of women. On all other devices, men and women were equally likely to play games, with computers (desktop or laptop) being the most common device used. Parents (66%) were more likely than non-parents (47%) to play games.

The wide definition of games in this survey may explain the differences between this and other studies which have found a significant male bias in gaming. Recall that Reiss et al (2008) reported that men found video games more rewarding due to their territorial aspects (see 2/13/08). Several authors have suggested that men and women prefer different styles of games (11/30/07). If so, console platforms may not be as likely to offer the games preferred by women.

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Personally, I don't think it's the type of games offered that makes the difference. On all the other devices listed, a user is likely to already have it up and running, and the activation energy to switch to a game is much lower. The main reason that I don't play console games much is because I have to commandeer the television, turn on the console, load the game, etc, etc, etc. It feels like a huge production to use the console game, and for the 10-20 minutes I usually want to play for, it feels like too much trouble. However, playing a round or two of Wordle on my phone can be done while waiting in line at the store. Time till fun on the phone: 15 seconds. Time till fun on the console: 3-4 minutes, and possibly getting the TV away from my partner. Winner: phone.

The biggest surprise for me (although it shouldn't have been) was the parent/non-parent divide. I would have thought the man-child demographic (such as me and my partner) would have been much more game-committed, and have more time for such pursuits. I keep forgetting that parents get exposed to games through their kids a lot more.

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Amnesia related to brain trauma

After a traumatic brain injury (TBI), it's fairly common for a patient to experience a short period of amnesia. The length of time for which a patient is amnesiac is a common metric of the severity of the injury. However, whether men or women tend to show worse amnesiac effects from TBI is unclear. A meta-analysis by Farace and Alves (2000) found that women fared slightly worse on post-traumatic amnesia. In contrast, Bounds et al (2003) and Koponen et al (2002) found no differences in the length of post-TBI amnesia.

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I was sad to read this morning that H.M. had passed away. H.M., as those of you who have taken introductory psychology courses may recall, was a patient suffering from intractable epilepsy. In the 1950's, in an attempt to relieve his symptoms, doctors removed most of his hippocampus on both sides. H.M. spent the rest of his life unable to form new long-term memories (anterograde amnesia), although his working and procedural memories were intact: think Memento (2000).

I may never have the question that has always baffled me answered. Did H.M. know that this had happened, or did he spend the next 50 years thinking that he was about to have surgery, and in fear of the next seizure?

(a note that amuses me: when typing the tags for this post, I put "memory" first and last. By the time I got to the end of the list, I'd forgotten that I'd already tagged it "memory")

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Job Satisfaction in Doctors

As with many areas, results on gender differences in job satisfaction are inconclusive. Our previous three looks at job satisfaction have found that women are more satisfied, men (in academia) are more satisfied, and that women are no more likely to leave a job than men. These inconsistencies suggest that analysis by occupational field may be the best way to determine if gender differences exist.

Women are entering the medical profession at increasing rates, and previous reports (e.g. Royal College of Physicians (UK), 2001) indicate that there is substantial danger of them leaving the field in record numbers as well. McMurray et al (2000) found that more female than male doctors reported "burnout" from their jobs. Antoniou et al's (2008) qualitative analysis looked specifically at junior doctors (mostly under 30, in Greece). The female doctors interviewed reported that "lack of appreciation" from coworkers and patients alike was their biggest stressor, while male doctors complained of hospital bureaucracy. Overall, however, job dissatisfaction levels seemed to be similar, while men reported higher levels of stress.

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One common thread in many of the job satisfaction studies I've looked at -- and I hope this is obvious -- is that women report some gender-related item as their top stressor, while men report some job-related item as their top stressor. It's not that the female doctors aren't stressing about the bureaucracy, it's that it comes after dealing with the sexism, dealing with their demands at home, dealing with lower wages. The thing that confuses me is that I would expect this to be true in all fields: so why are there such inconsistencies between studies?

This is the 600th post on DifferenceBlog, according to my Blogger Stats! Woo!

Dependence on Methodology

The Harrington and Farias (2008) attempted to determine "why FMRI studies evaluating language related sex effects have been so inconsistent." Previous studies have failed to find consistent evidence for neural differences in language processing between men and women. While their study did find greater left hemisphere activations in men and greater right hemisphere activations in women, the main conclusion was that: "some methods . . . revealed sex differences while others methods did not, indicating a dependence on methodology." In general, however, Harrington and Farias did not indicate that sex differences in language processing were consistent enough to warrant separate groups for most FMRI studies.

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Behavioral differences in language tasks seem to be fairly robust between men and women. However, they don't tend to appear in the sample size used in most fMRI studies (n = 40 in Harrington and Farias, and no behavioral difference on the language tasks was detected). I'm not surprised to hear that you can find sex differences by some methods and not by others; however, I do wonder about reporting bias. I try to write about "gender similarities" as often as possible, but they're not reported as often as "gender differences." They're not as sexy. How much evidence of similarity never gets published, do you think? As with this study, most similarities get marked down to "insufficient power" in the sample size. How many insufficiently powered similarities does it take to reach the conclusion that the null hypothesis (i.e. "no difference") is true?

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Valuable smiles

Glied and Neidell (2008) report that women who grew up with fluoridated water earn 4% more than their non-fluoridated counterparts. There was no significant effect on earnings for men. The authors suggest that this demonstrates greater discrimination on appearance, and greater self-selection into fields that discriminate based on appearance, for women than men. This would be consistent with Chiao et al's (2008) finding that attractiveness was a greater predictor for electability of female candidates than male ones.

However, when teeth enter the picture, there are other factors to consider. As previously discussed in DifferenceBlog (1/17/07), women tend to have worse teeth than men cross-culturally, which may be due to hormone-related differences in saliva. Additionally, women smile more at work than men (1/24/07), which would mean women would be showing off their attractive or unattractive teeth more often.

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Glied and Neidell don't seem to take actual tooth appearance into account, but just the community where someone grew up. However, I think the smile frequency, and the women's tendency to show more effect of dental risk factors, would have a greater effect. However, I would be interested to see results within a specific field, to see if the career-selection effect were as strong as suggested.

I hid my teeth a lot as a kid. To this day, there aren't a lot of pictures of me smiling with teeth, because I've been fairly ashamed of my crooked lower teeth for as long as I can remember. (Looking at pictures, my top teeth aren't anything to brag about either). My teeth crowded when I was a kid because I had a small mouth. I do smile with teeth now, but not much when I think there's a picture being taken. Actually, my self-consciousness over my teeth is one of the main factors influencing how much I like a picture of myself.

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Absenteeism and Parenting

In September, fuzzy wondered whether the "safety net" of a second income affected job commitment for men. Data from Leigh (1983) suggests that he may be on to something. Women with children took nearly 50% more sick time than women without; men with children took 10% less sick time than childless men. However, VandenHeuvel and Wooden (1995) did not find any differential effect of children on men's and women's absenteeism.

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(written Sunday night) I'm sick. This sucks. I don't take a lot of time out of work, but I think I'm sleeping in tomorrow (which is why I'm writing this now). I was disappointed that the studies I've been able to find don't seem to take spouse's income levels into account. I think fuzzy's on to something, but I don't have sufficient evidence to back it up... yet.

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