The Truth about Boys and Girls

SEX DIFFERENCES: Are boys really more aggressive and girls really more empathetic--or do we just see what we expect in them?

• Boys and girls are different, but most psychological sex differences are not especially large. For example, gaps in intellectual performance, empathy and even most types of aggression are generally much narrower than the disparity in adult height, in which the average man is taller than 99 percent of women.
• Researchers have found very few large-scale differences between boys and girls in brain structure or function. Boys have larger brains, and girls’ brains finish growing earlier than boys’ do. But neither of these findings explains why boys are more active and girls more verbal or reveals a plausible basis for any of the other emotional and cognitive differences between the sexes.
• Experience itself changes brain structure and function. Most sex differences start out small—as mere biases in temperament and play style—but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture.