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0 pointswoodruffw4y ago0 comments

It occurs to me that "men are socialized to be aggressive (and are rewarded for aggression, unlike women), and aggressive social traits translate well to both criminal and business enterprises" has equal explanatory power but is significantly more parsimonious than the variability hypothesis.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

pgcj_poster4y ago· 3 in thread

This is obviously correct, at least with respect to prisoners. It also does not require that male aggression be socialized—it holds equally well if it's innate.

belorn4y ago

Aggression as a word is socially context dependent. People can be competing aggressively at a donation drive about who can donate the highest amount of money to charity.

The distinction between innate vs socialized becomes a bit muddy when dealing with humans.

woodruffwOP4y ago

Sure. But again, parsimony: we have lots of evidence for aggressive male socialization (including decreasing aggressive socialization as society becomes more egalitarian), and relatively little reproducible evidence for innate male aggression.

Decreasing aggressive socialization as society becomes more egalitarian would seem to be evidence for the _opposite_ of "aggressive male socialization". And that points to the baseline level of male aggression being higher than it is in egalitarian societies.

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