The origin of sex differences in human behaviour is a rich seam of misunderstanding about innateness and culture. Our culture relentlessly reinforces the stereotype that little boys prefer to play with trucks and little girls prefer to play with dolls. The toy shops are divided into pink girls’ and blue boys’ aisles, pandering to the fact that adults are quite happy to see girls and boys in conventionally different ways. This enrages many feminists, who insist that the very origin of these sex differences lies in the way they are forced upon children by the prevailing culture. But they are confusing cause and effect. Parents buy trucks for boys and dolls for girls not because they are slaves to hegemony, but because experience tells them that is what their children want. Experiment after experiment has shown that given a choice, girls will play with dolls and boys with trucks, no matter what their previous experience. Most parents are happy to reinforce sex differences, but have no interest in starting them from scratch. In the early 2000s, the behavioural scientist Melissa Hines really put the cat among the pigeons by showing that the very same preference is true of male and female monkeys. Given the choice, female monkeys will play with dolls, males with trucks. This experiment caused fury and criticism from other psychologists determined to find fault with it. But it has since been repeated in a different species of monkey, with the same result. Female monkeys, unaware that they are slaves to cultural stereotypes, like things with faces. Male monkeys, unaware that they are doing the bidding of human sexists, like things with moving parts. In a triumphant vindication of Judith Rich Harris’s argument, it has now been conclusively shown that the aisles of toy shops, with their rampant sexism, are responding to innate preferences in human beings, not causing them. These differences were not imposed, they evolved.
The author describes how cultural stereotypes and possibly preferences were a result of evolution from innate preferences. In this case, it was this experiment where female monkeys were more likely to play with dolls and males with trucks.
I tried finding out more about this monkey experiment. The scientist, Melissa Hines, has also gone on to do many more different experiments to try and determine how prenatal hormones exposure can shape difference in our preferences.
