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0 pointslnanek211y ago0 comments

Not really. There have been monkey studies showing males like physical things like cars and girls like nurturing things like dolls. It's PC to deny genetic differences in play at this point, but it isn't scientific.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

rbehrends11y ago· 1 in thread

This is an often misquoted study [1]. The complete picture is actually different in that the male monkeys had an anti-plush toy bias, but the female monkeys had no clear preference for either wheel or plush toys (regardless of what you want to infer from that):

Mirroring the marked sex difference in infant interactions and children’s toy preferences, male monkeys interacted significantly less with plush toys than did female monkeys. By contrast, males and females interacted with wheeled toys comparably, displaying no reliable sex differences. As is the case with sex differences in children’s toy preferences, only male monkeys showed a significant preference for one toy type over the other, preferring wheeled over plush toys. Unlike male monkeys and like girls, female monkeys did not show any reliable preference for either toy type.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

SolarNet11y ago

So the correct summery would be, male monkeys don't prefer (plushy) dolls.

Which doesn't seem to imply much, especially since many human males (and females!) tend to enjoy Warhammer-esque figures and action figures anyway. In point of fact, the evidence that humans prefer them for the intellectual qualities associated with them shows we have a higher intelligence which can deal with and ignore our primal instincts anyway.

collyw11y ago

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundament...

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