The Art of Manliness - #229： How Men and Women Socialize Differently

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so the popular

00:00:18.680 idea out there is that women are more social than men and men are more competitive than women

00:00:23.080 what's more these tendencies are socially conditioned rather than biologically innate

00:00:26.960 but what if it's the other way around my guest today is a psychologist who has spent 30 years

00:00:31.700 researching the differences between how boys and girls socialize and she's discovered that many of

00:00:35.920 the ideas that people have on the subject are completely wrong her name is joyce bendison and

00:00:39.640 she's the author of the book warriors and warriors the survival of the sexes and today on the show

00:00:43.880 joyce and i discuss the biological origins of male and female socialization why men prefer all male

00:00:49.420 groups and why women can be just as if not more competitive as men we also discuss how men compete

00:00:55.240 to cooperate and why men can make up much faster with an enemy than women can really fascinating

00:01:00.760 podcast after the show check out the show notes at aom.is slash bendison that's b-e-n-e-n-s-o-n

00:01:07.540 for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:01:10.360 joyce bendison welcome to the show thank you um so you are the author of a book called warriors and

00:01:20.400 warriors uh talks about the differences between how boys and girls socialize uh but before we get

00:01:26.560 to the details of your research can you tell us about your background what led you to researching

00:01:31.120 these social differences between boys and girls okay so i was trained as a developmental psychologist

00:01:38.140 and i spent a lot of my time out on the playground watching kids far away from adults do what kids

00:01:43.780 do naturally which is not so easy to see these days um and what i was seeing is a tremendous

00:01:50.020 difference in how boys and girls were playing with boys in large groups um engaging in either fighting

00:01:56.520 or team sports um being as far away as possible from their schools or any adults that were around

00:02:02.380 and so forth and in contrast girls either with a best friend or a small clique not engaging in any sort

00:02:09.300 of competition if possible staying as close as possible to the teachers and actually staying in

00:02:14.220 the schools if they're at a school or a camp um near the counselors and helping out teachers and trying

00:02:20.020 to be with adults okay so yeah right there you talked about the the big broad differences and i thought

00:02:24.760 it was interesting you said that it's harder to to see nowadays because there's less play time less

00:02:28.840 recess exactly it really is and adults are trying to control everything kids do so um what you're

00:02:36.100 saying is not natural it's what kids are being forced into um by protective adults so um it's

00:02:42.260 harder to look at what kids would most like to do okay and so uh these differences are they are they

00:02:48.080 innate or they the result of culture and socialization or are they a bit of both okay well always they would

00:02:55.240 be a bit of both but um regardless of how they begin initially um certainly if they're beginning early

00:03:02.060 in childhood there's a lot of socialization that occurs long before kids get to be adults

00:03:06.760 so um the reason i study young kids is i do think it's more likely to have an innate bias if you see

00:03:12.940 it really early and some of the research i do is even with infants so if it's there with infants i kind

00:03:18.200 of think there's probably good evidence that there's some innate bias but regardless if it's there with

00:03:23.220 infants or an early childhood there's a lot of practice which is socialization not necessarily by adults

00:03:28.960 which is how usually people think about socialization um but by peers and so there's a lot of that

00:03:35.040 happening so you talk about the research you do on infants on in your book i thought that was

00:03:39.400 interesting how can you tell for example that boys prefer you know larger groups um you know

00:03:45.200 rough and tumble play even when they're six months old and they can't really socialize

00:03:49.940 okay so um what you do is children including babies are have lots of preferences just like anybody

00:03:58.020 else just like animals do so you put two videos side by side and you just determine which way kids

00:04:04.160 are looking so you put an infant on his or her mother's lap um and you blindfold the mother or

00:04:11.220 sometimes as a father and then you just play um on these screens pictures of groups or pictures of

00:04:17.560 individuals pictures of hitting motions or pictures of cradling motions and we find even at six months of

00:04:23.260 age that boys are more likely to prefer the groups over the individuals and boys are more likely to

00:04:29.140 prefer the hitting motions as opposed to the cradling motions that's really interesting i mean that's

00:04:33.400 pretty funny that even infant boys like to watch people get pummeled um yeah so i mean do they i mean

00:04:40.040 i imagine um i mean you kind of you described yourself as a a human primatologist i think that's what

00:04:46.340 you talked about in your book i mean do you see this these this this these differences in other primates

00:04:52.600 between boys and girls or males and females okay so so um i work most closely with richard wrangham

00:04:59.160 at harvard and he studies chimpanzees and the reason i started working with him is because he was the

00:05:03.840 only one i could find who was looking at exactly what i was looking at which is the social structure

00:05:09.300 of humans and he was looking at the social structure of chimpanzees and we were both finding the

00:05:14.360 exact same differences which is that males were organizing themselves spontaneously in large

00:05:20.660 groups very interconnected constantly fighting but also fighting against other groups and in contrast

00:05:27.940 females in both species were either by themselves and just with adults or their own children or 0.83

00:05:34.780 sometimes females will form one close best friend relationship so um it was just uncanny and when i

00:05:41.620 discovered that as a graduate student i started thinking why isn't anyone who studies humans

00:05:46.980 talking about the basic social structure of humans and they weren't and they still aren't for the most

00:05:53.280 part but primatologists are this is what they do when they study a species one of the first things

00:05:58.620 they establish is what's the social structure that's amazing yeah we had uh richard wrangham on the

00:06:03.260 podcast a while back so for those of you who haven't checked that out uh just search for it on the site

00:06:07.740 a really fascinating uh podcast about demonic males was what his book was exactly um so let's talk about

00:06:15.100 like so why do these differences exist what's the i mean i guess it's an evolutionary explanation why do

00:06:20.700 boys or men prefer large groups large social networks uh fighting while girls prefer smaller 0.99

00:06:28.140 tight-knit communities maybe just like one or two close friends and more cooperation or i guess not

00:06:33.320 cooperation more i don't know what you would call it not rough and tumble well exactly i mean what we

00:06:40.260 talk about with cooperation is females cooperating with their families with kin with taking care of 1.00

00:06:45.860 children so you know that's what they're doing um males are cooperating with unrelated same-sex

00:06:51.320 individuals and just building on the reference to demonic males humans and chimpanzees are one of the

00:06:57.840 very few species that engage in intergroup lethal aggression which in uh human parlance we call war

00:07:04.620 so basically if you're going to have a community try to kill another community or in these days uh

00:07:10.760 country try to invade another country um you need very very strong cooperation and the individuals who

00:07:19.200 generally do that throughout human history are males and in chimpanzee communities uh across africa it's

00:07:25.360 the same thing individuals who do that are males so it's really important that these males are

00:07:30.840 successful it's important to the whole community because if not your community gets taken over by

00:07:35.620 another community and they get your food and they kill you and that's kind of the end of your community 0.80

00:07:41.040 so the cooperation and the self-sacrifice and the trust that has to exist amongst the males of your

00:07:48.340 community is really really important and that is true whether it's chimpanzees or humans and i

00:07:55.140 became so fascinated by richard rangham's work because it was so similar to what we have in humans and

00:08:03.680 so rare in animal species yeah and you talk about in the book sort of uh about the the fears the

00:08:09.920 different fears that boys and girls have uh and how and how that influence influences the way they

00:08:15.080 socialize and you say like for boys the big fear that boys have are enemies like they want to think

00:08:20.640 they fear enemies but they also kind of like having enemies exactly i mean enemies are really really

00:08:26.880 attractive to boys so you know they have sharks and tiger enemies they have you know mean uh men 0.90

00:08:34.180 enemies and of course they make up all kinds of enemies that come from mars and that come from all 0.98

00:08:38.860 kinds of other alien spaces and whatever so boys are really i see that by three they assume they assume

00:08:47.400 the responsibility for getting rid of the enemy which is a whole group or horrible individual who can

00:08:53.640 decimate their community and girls have no interest in this whatsoever girls are much more concerned with 0.98

00:08:59.080 making sure they don't get sick making sure things are healthy making sure you know that um they don't get cut

00:09:05.700 all kinds of things that really in the real life of three-year-olds make a bigger difference to their survival

00:09:10.880 so that's why i find it so funny because um boys are doing things that at three they're not going to

00:09:16.780 be responsible for at all um which is why they more often end up in the emergency room all over the world

00:09:22.060 yeah and i mean you talk about um that these differences are all based on survival for for boys

00:09:29.360 for the community to survive uh they need need men who can fight so it makes sense that boys would

00:09:35.580 kind of be had this tendency to fight and cooperate in large groups where women the survival thing is 1.00

00:09:40.740 all about taking care of your kids and making sure that they survive and they can pass on your genes 0.73

00:09:45.720 exactly so by age five in a lot of communities in the world um girls are already taking care of their

00:09:52.280 younger siblings so it's really important their work and that continues of course for the rest of

00:09:56.740 their life when grandmothers take care of their grandchildren and it really does affect the chances 0.94

00:10:02.300 that their grandchildren live so girls jobs are really important boys don't have that level of 0.97

00:10:08.420 importance until the enemy uh attacks or they need food or resources for their community and they

00:10:15.400 have to be the one attacking attacking so you have you know really a whole different set of

00:10:21.360 responsibilities for girls versus boys at least that's how i see it and i see it by age three

00:10:27.080 yeah that is it's really amazing um so like going back to this idea common i what you said earlier about

00:10:33.620 cooperation i think there's this common idea out there that you know women are more social than men

00:10:38.740 but it seems like your research suggests that's not actually true that men um might be even sometimes

00:10:44.560 more social than women uh why do we have this idea that women are more social than men and how are men

00:10:51.240 oftentimes more social than women right okay so um most of the social sciences describe women as the 1.00

00:10:58.080 communal sex the cooperative sex the emotionally connected sex the caring sex whatever and men are

00:11:03.220 independent and agentic and you know status driving and not really into anybody else um this is what

00:11:08.760 the social science literature says and i think what they're doing is they're looking at the incredible

00:11:13.060 bonds that mothers form to their children to husbands to their own mothers um and these really um

00:11:21.460 are last throughout a lifetime so they're very very powerful in contrast right boys are off going as far as

00:11:29.140 part uh as far away as possible from you know their their parents their homes they're going off with

00:11:36.020 each other so and they're fighting and they're you know committing homicide with ratios 10 to 1 um so

00:11:41.820 this does not sound communal or caring or interconnected in fact though if you look at relationships between

00:11:49.560 unrelated same-sex peers girls with girls women with women or boys with boys and men's men

00:11:55.300 you find that boys and men are cooperating much more with each other they'll die for each other in a war

00:12:02.680 and if you look at who's running the government who's running religious institutions who's running

00:12:06.880 educational institutions um just now women are kind of entering these bastions of male cooperation 0.99

00:12:13.920 but they've always been male and they've built society men have built society there is no other way to

00:12:20.900 say it women we are keeping people alive but men have cooperated to build societies and so i think

00:12:29.060 you need to say okay are you talking about with families with kin or are you talking about with

00:12:34.700 unrelated individuals who shared none of your genes and that's where i see men as much more communal and

00:12:42.400 cooperative and as i say in my book what could be more communal communal or cooperative than warfare i mean

00:12:49.520 you're living with these filthy swearing you know uh same age unrelated men and you're having a ball a lot

00:12:58.220 of the time yeah and and i think it's interesting too you talk about how men you know compete with each

00:13:04.980 other and with other groups to bond which seems really counterintuitive that you would you can bond that

00:13:09.800 way through competition right so i have an article out this week that's that's received a lot of press

00:13:16.300 and what it does is it looks at four different sports tennis table tennis badminton and boxing

00:13:21.760 where they literally try to kill each other and i looked at those sports to try to build on what i had

00:13:27.320 done in the book and say how do you get from constant one-on-one competition and even aggression

00:13:33.280 to cooperation in a group against other groups and the mechanism that richard rangham and i came up with

00:13:40.040 was reconciliation so what happens in chimpanzee communities is males who are fighting all the

00:13:46.780 time whereas females barely fight um males who are fighting all the time also reconcile a higher

00:13:53.040 percentage of their conflicts by engaging in post-conflict affiliation they hug each other they

00:13:59.380 actually shake hands they touch each other's hand and they shake it um and that allows them then to

00:14:05.520 turn around and bond with their former opponent and what what we did um there what richard rangham

00:14:12.060 and i did just recently um and published this week is try to make that um link clear in humans so

00:14:19.540 across these four sports males after losing a competition because it's hard for me to understand as a

00:14:25.880 woman but they will hug each other they'll warmly shake hands they'll give each other pets on the back

00:14:31.300 and you know they just run uh lost a grand slam tennis championship they just almost killed each

00:14:36.780 other in a boxing match sometimes they actually do kill each other in which case they can't do this

00:14:40.600 but they always feel bad really bad about it afterwards in contrast after these competitions

00:14:46.460 where you would expect that women wouldn't care as much you know they're supposed to be more 1.00

00:14:51.500 cooperative but of course they're with unrelated females women can barely touch each other they'll like 1.00

00:14:56.960 uh rub each other's fingers and then run off the court um they'll give each other a quick hug in

00:15:03.320 boxing and get out of there as fast as possible and you can see that they're really having a hard

00:15:08.340 time and i understand this if i just lost to somebody and i really cared about winning because i'm a

00:15:12.900 top athlete and these athletes came from 44 different countries i too would want to get out of there

00:15:19.600 you know and hate the person who just deprived me of the status and the money and everything that i worked

00:15:25.820 so hard to achieve but men don't do that they they literally somehow managed to get over it really

00:15:33.380 fast i mean is the thinking the reason why men do that is because you know that person that beat them

00:15:38.880 could be a potential ally in the future so you want to make up that's exactly our thinking so

00:15:45.760 basically you know if in one chapter i'm talking about competition and fighting and you know

00:15:51.740 constant competition among boys and in the next chapter i'm talking about group cooperation and

00:15:57.140 the question is you know how do you go from a to b something has to happen in the middle which

00:16:03.060 doesn't make sense um to me as a female but this is the best evidence that we have now which is there

00:16:09.940 is this post-conflict affiliation and it happens within five minutes with chimpanzee males and it

00:16:15.800 happens immediately within five minutes for these sports competitors and it's just it's just unnerving

00:16:23.020 to watch because i don't know i can't stand it because as a woman i'm thinking how could they do

00:16:28.940 that but the men really look warm they really look like they care about the person who just killed them

00:16:34.620 or who they just killed and the women look just stunned and like they they're disgusted

00:16:40.180 and i think it's interesting you highlight in the book um a famous experiment that happened actually

00:16:45.880 here in oklahoma the robber's cave experiment that sort of highlights this different this this um

00:16:51.680 contrast between boys competing with each other but then reconciling with each other to you know

00:16:58.340 go after another enemy can you talk a little bit about the robber's cave experiment yeah that's one of

00:17:03.180 the most classic studies um they brought two groups i believe is 11 year old boys um to two

00:17:09.940 campsites that were distant so they didn't know about one another and these boys gave themselves names

00:17:15.900 the eagles and the rattlers and um then slowly the counselors let them become aware of the fact of

00:17:22.840 one another's existence and immediately after these boys within their own groups have been competing over

00:17:28.740 all kinds of things that boys at camp you know compete over having their own tugs of war and

00:17:33.360 you know um baseball and whatever now all of a sudden there's another group so they drop this

00:17:39.680 extreme competition and they let whoever is best at whatever is the domain whether it's tug of war or

00:17:46.620 it's baseball or tent building or whatever the competitions that the counselors organized were

00:17:51.920 these boys then chose the best boy from their group to lead all of them supported him totally

00:17:58.300 they had hierarchies and their sole goal was try to try to beat the other group and boy was it intense

00:18:04.300 they had to actually break them up sometime they felt so strongly about winning against the other

00:18:09.380 group yeah i think there was like raiding going on like they would like go and raid the other guy's

00:18:13.340 cabin steal stuff demolish things yep and i think the experimenters even thought about calling off the

00:18:18.640 experiment because it was getting a little out of hand yeah it was out of hand and they thought they

00:18:23.780 could you know bring them together and watch some movies and everything would be okay so they

00:18:27.380 started getting really worried and they're trying all these joint you know having dinner together and

00:18:31.880 all this wasn't working finally the only thing that worked is they created an emergency that required

00:18:37.640 the two boys to get together as one team and that's where you see organizations like nato and

00:18:42.920 and these um alliances across the world that seem to be the only way to get warring nations together in

00:18:49.820 many cases and in this case i think they had a truck breakdown and the boys were really stranded and

00:18:55.120 both the eagles and the rattlers were on the truck and they needed all of them because the truck was

00:19:00.160 so heavy to push the truck i can't remember the details and and to save all the boys and then

00:19:05.220 that broke down the barriers between the two groups right so they had the enemy the enemy was the truck

00:19:09.540 was the common enemy exactly yeah that's really interesting well and going back to this difference

00:19:15.060 between how you know boys and girls socialize um you talk about in the book that boys prefer all male

00:19:20.320 groups while girls aren't very particular about their group of friends if it's co-ed or not why is

00:19:25.800 that well okay again i have an evolutionary explanation um so what i would argue is that male

00:19:34.480 groups and that means unrelated boys right really benefit from one another so they mutually need to grow up

00:19:42.860 together form their bond so they can defend their communities if another community attacks or if they're

00:19:48.300 going to attack another community i don't and i know this is very controversial but i don't see the

00:19:54.180 advantage of unrelated females spending time together and even though it feels wonderful to have a best

00:20:00.960 friend and a best friend certainly can be a source of relaxation and she can even be a protection

00:20:06.640 against other girls trying to hurt you in terms of socially excluding you and so forth but basically

00:20:12.720 a woman is faced with bringing up her children and she never has enough energy to accomplish that on 1.00

00:20:20.340 her own so who's going to help her well not another woman who also doesn't have enough energy to bring 1.00

00:20:25.520 up her own children that makes no sense so therefore a woman a mother turns to those who have a genetic 1.00

00:20:32.480 interest in her children her own mother her husband um any other female relatives maybe her in-laws

00:20:39.540 those are the people that are going to be most likely to invest hopefully they've already had

00:20:43.880 their children so there's no competition with raising children but an unrelated woman she can be a source 1.00

00:20:50.560 of sharing similar experiences which is wonderful to have feels good but in the end it's amazing to me

00:20:57.200 how much women do not help each other raise their own kids they don't get together and say okay listen 1.00

00:21:02.560 we all have kids we're all stuck we don't have enough energy we need to produce we have you know

00:21:07.400 unreliable husbands so why don't we share this burden all together you know because some of us will work

00:21:12.720 and some of us will take care of the kids and and we don't need to you know have husbands we don't 0.95

00:21:17.100 need to have families we can do it ourselves and i i'm not aware of that happening that's really

00:21:22.760 interesting and so going back to to boys like how so the boys prefer all male groups how do they decide

00:21:29.060 who's in the group or who's not okay so i talk about this quite a bit um you know i was describing

00:21:38.300 a lot of results people have found in developmental psychology but from a theoretical point of view

00:21:42.920 who should be in the group well who will help you if you are fighting against another group you want

00:21:48.860 people that you can trust so who can you trust well girls are just so much weaker and slower and really 1.00

00:21:55.640 much less strong at throwing projectiles and so forth so you don't want girls that's not helpful 1.00

00:22:01.320 and you don't want your mother as much as she loves you and takes care of you she's going to be of no 0.94

00:22:07.900 use if there's a war um so eventually when you get to be a teenager you're going to be at the height of

00:22:13.720 your physical prowess you want others who are also at the height of their physical prowess so you want

00:22:19.260 strong individuals you want emotionally cool individuals who are not going to break down because

00:22:25.000 they're so afraid because they might be killed you want individuals who are going to be sociable

00:22:29.460 and follow the rules so that you don't have uh males going off and doing whatever they want they're

00:22:35.540 going to be loyal to the group and they're going to be able to listen to the hierarchy so you make

00:22:39.980 sure that the best people are at the top you want people who have expertise so those who are particularly

00:22:45.880 good for example with leadership those who are good at repairing things those are good at

00:22:51.940 understanding strategy for how to attack whatever it is even those who are good at cooking you know

00:22:57.320 any kind of strength that can contribute to the war effort is really worthwhile and you don't want 0.90

00:23:04.240 girls and i talk about homosexual boys but i only mean homosexual boys who are not willing to help out 0.97

00:23:11.600 the other boys i always found it so horrifying and yet amazing that so early in life boys ostracize

00:23:20.080 other boys who are more effeminate and i thought why do they bother do this right it's so costly to

00:23:25.900 spend so much time what is it and then i realized i mean there's a lot of men who are homosexual who

00:23:31.800 are just fine with fighting there's no problem with it and you know many people think you can be

00:23:36.220 heterosexual and hetero homosexual at the same time but those boys who don't like other boys who would 0.82

00:23:42.820 prefer to be at the girls prefer to play house who are scared who don't want to follow the rules

00:23:47.660 because girls don't like these rules either who don't want to you know basically be cool and who 1.00

00:23:54.360 aren't particularly physically tough they're not going to be a help you know if there's an enemy that

00:23:59.440 fights and fights you so therefore what you want are boys who have certain characteristics that would

00:24:05.560 contribute to the fighting force and of course everyone in developmental psychology knows that boys don't

00:24:10.960 like other boys with these particular traits they you know they break all the rules they they're not

00:24:16.740 sociable with the other boys they're not physically tough they're not emotionally cool so forth

00:24:21.120 um and so i i everyone knows this but i then i it suddenly occurred to me well there's a good reason

00:24:27.580 that boys would come so early with these preferences because that's exactly what the army is describing

00:24:33.000 they don't want either and you know going back to that idea that what boys and men don't like

00:24:37.800 is not necessarily homosexuality it's just effeminacy 1.00

00:24:40.500 exactly so like so are there instances where a girl could be a part of the male gang if like if

00:24:48.460 they're like tomboyish yes i do think boys will accept tomboys um all over the world boys are always

00:24:57.080 superior dominant to girls and you know i think a girl has to put up with that but if she really likes 1.00

00:25:03.320 playing with the boys if she likes following the rules if she's physically tough if she's emotionally cool

00:25:07.920 if she's got some expertise she can contribute boys will take that and of course more and more

00:25:12.940 girls are entering you know the army the military in the united states in some countries they do all 1.00

00:25:18.320 the time um and it is true actually with chimpanzees too almost all of the ones who are engaging in

00:25:24.980 intergroup war um are male but occasionally you have a female who's really tough um the ones i'm aware of

00:25:32.140 didn't ever have their own children they were sterile and they'll join and the males will treat them as 0.97

00:25:37.180 another male and you know they're they're not going to be dominant they're going to be subordinate

00:25:41.300 but they'll take them along and they're useful because there's power numbers yeah and i think

00:25:46.080 going back to this idea i thought it was something you just mentioned earlier about how boys are

00:25:49.940 obsessed with rules and rulemaking which is kind of weird because you always think of like as boys

00:25:53.340 as being troublesome they don't obey the rules in class you know etc etc why are boys obsessed with

00:25:59.980 rules and rulemaking okay so again very important they certainly not obsessed or willing to even

00:26:07.720 follow the rules of authority figures they're obsessed with their own rules and my best guess is to

00:26:13.820 the reason this is the case is this is how you create a hierarchy and boys are constantly competing

00:26:19.380 over everything i mean at three years of age they're competing over the to me silliest things like

00:26:23.920 who can make the best paper airplane who can jump highest in the air who can you know run their

00:26:28.020 tricycle facets across the room whatever it is they can think of they'll compete over it um but

00:26:33.640 it's very important that the other boys fall into line so they need to acknowledge and they do

00:26:39.160 acknowledge who's best who's second best who's the third best but just because you're the best in one

00:26:44.520 area like uh making the best paper airplanes doesn't mean you can jump the highest so the idea is

00:26:50.720 these are rules who who is top who is second top who is third third and that means that if you happen

00:26:57.920 to be facing another group you can put your best man forward and so i think that's part of it now i know

00:27:04.220 that there have been studies looking at um team sports where boys will spend more time negotiating the

00:27:10.460 rules and renegotiating them than they will actually playing the game so i don't totally understand

00:27:16.720 what's the reason but i have to guess it has to do with strategy in terms of okay this is how we are

00:27:23.180 going to run our team our group perhaps our military outfit and listen you can't break it you can't break

00:27:30.220 the rule because we're gonna die if you do so that is again totally guess but that is my guess that you

00:27:37.400 need others who can flexibly create new rules break them but agree to follow whatever that group

00:27:43.420 rules are at the moment very interesting so we've been talking about um competition amongst boys um

00:27:49.220 but girls compete too but they do in a different way how do girls compete with each other 0.99

00:27:54.860 okay so um girls um have to be really careful not to get hurt because girls are responsible for their 1.00

00:28:04.260 whole lives really starting at age five in many you know traditional cultures for taking care of their

00:28:09.520 younger siblings and grandmothers as i said will take care of their grandchildren and and really

00:28:15.940 there's studies showing they can affect whether their grandchildren live or not so throughout their

00:28:21.160 lives girls are responsible for keeping others alive um they're born with a finite number of ova 1.00

00:28:26.680 they have to make sure they don't hurt them they have to protect their bodies which are many ways much

00:28:32.280 more complicated than boys bodies so they can't get hurt so no fighting physically if you can help it at

00:28:39.300 all and therefore girls have to figure out a different way to compete because there are things to compete 1.00

00:28:44.820 for um in most societies girls in adolescence do compete for men um even when their parents are

00:28:52.420 helping make the selection girls will have some say in it almost always in hunter-gatherer tribes 1.00

00:28:57.840 women make their own choices which is like here so there's really good reason to compete and before 1.00

00:29:04.700 that girls compete over friends they compete over resources they compete over activities so they do 0.95

00:29:11.160 compete so um the question is what do they do and of course they're going to use some type of

00:29:17.040 aggression where they can't get caught and they can't um face retaliation which could which could

00:29:22.840 physically hurt them so what do they do they disguise their aggression um you can disguise aggression

00:29:28.120 a lot of ways you can um well you can beat up somebody's stuff like um ruin her art project or

00:29:35.880 whatever when she's not there um you can say terrible things about anyone when she's not there

00:29:41.080 you can try to ruin someone's reputation um and you can do it even when a girl who is your target is

00:29:47.440 right there as long as you're subtle enough so if you're saying to this girl oh you know poor you

00:29:53.960 you know it's such a shame that you have whatever vulnerability and it sounds good to the outside

00:29:58.840 world but in fact you're putting this girl down and then if there's enough people around you can

00:30:04.620 damage this girl without her knowing even what's happening because it's so subtle and you can do this

00:30:09.860 with non-verbal gestures so you can flick your hair you can roll your eyes you can emphasize some

00:30:16.660 words or make a very prescient pause whatever it is um and you say to others this girl's no good

00:30:24.060 and if it's serious enough so you have a really pretty girl you have a newcomer girl in adolescence

00:30:29.720 you have a girl who's vulnerable in some way so she's a low-hanging fruit you can get together

00:30:34.580 with the other girls and you can really effectively ostracize a girl and because there's not power 0.99

00:30:39.840 numbers in fact there's more resources and more males around if you get rid of a girl or a woman 0.99

00:30:45.440 um it's scary to be a girl or woman with only unrelated girls around because girls do aggress 1.00

00:30:52.580 and eventually of course they in adolescence and adulthood girls will turn to authority figures 1.00

00:30:58.160 like men and others and try to ostracize a girl from the community and even i will say in um preschool 0.60

00:31:06.180 girls will go tell the teacher much more than boys will to try to get rid of some other girl who's 1.00

00:31:11.300 breaking the rules so and those rules are teacher's rules and so what you have is girls using completely 0.89

00:31:17.560 different strategies than boys but nevertheless aggressing and competing so yeah girls will use 1.00

00:31:22.820 third parties while boys will just try to take care of you know self-help yeah okay um so how does uh

00:31:29.860 environment affect these innate um tendencies for socialization like is when times of stress

00:31:36.320 and danger do they amplify and in times of like prosperity and safety do they kind of diminish

00:31:41.860 yeah that's exactly what you know i would argue now again here the research has not been done and it

00:31:48.920 ought to be but what i argue or theorize in my book is that if you're living in a society where

00:31:54.480 there isn't an imminent threat of war or you're not sending a lot of boys to the military then mothers 0.92

00:32:01.020 kind of communicate to boys that they needn't be so aggressive they and they do this by being closer

00:32:06.180 to them having secure attachment spending a lot of time with their sons and the boys do not spend that

00:32:12.320 much time then relatively with other boys so therefore you have a lot more of expressing emotions and

00:32:19.600 taking care of younger siblings and and doing things that you know are more similar to girls but should 0.88

00:32:25.860 there be a threat of war or you have a large percentage of individuals entering the military mother

00:32:30.060 can't do that so she says okay you're on your own you've got to be independent the boy will spend

00:32:34.900 more time with males other young boys are going to fight compete engage in intergroup competitions

00:32:41.040 and then you have boys who are getting prepared to actually enter warfare so i that is what i would

00:32:47.740 hypothesize that mothers are somehow communicating to their sons not consciously but inadvertently by their

00:32:54.720 actions what kind of life they can expect and how secure is it going to be and how much are they

00:32:59.980 going to have to take responsibility for dealing with the enemy i think all boys are interested in

00:33:05.160 this but in some cases they end up dealing with it much earlier than in other cases as for girls

00:33:11.340 as far as environmental stressors there is some research that suggests that if there's not a mother

00:33:18.940 around who can really invest in her daughter then girls are more likely to start menstruating earlier 1.00

00:33:24.840 and to look for a mate much earlier and so she grows up faster still however you get girls who are 1.00

00:33:32.920 going to be primarily taking care of children and they will try to maintain their bonds with their

00:33:39.000 mothers and you know going back earlier what you said about schools that also it seems like they're

00:33:43.120 trying to communicate the message that you know you don't aggression is not needed right now

00:33:47.820 cooperation sort of like how you know what we think of as cooperation not male cooperation is what we need to

00:33:53.740 emphasize yeah i mean that's what a middle class or rich school communicates to boys i'm not sure a

00:34:01.880 poor school might try but they're not going to be as successful i mean certainly we know throughout

00:34:06.440 the united states um you look at a low socioeconomic status school and the boys are given a lot more

00:34:12.580 freedom and they're getting in a lot more trouble and they're spending a lot more time with each other

00:34:16.240 certainly when i'm in a very poor school a lot of times there's not even a teacher in the classroom or if

00:34:21.420 the teacher's there she's just doing something else and the boys are beating each other up um when i

00:34:27.020 lived in britain it was kind of um actually even in the upper class schools it was kind of um i would

00:34:34.180 say encouraged that if a boy has a fight with another boy well just leave them alone they'll beat the hell

00:34:39.800 out of each other sorry but they will beat the hell out of each other and um they'll figure it out and

00:34:45.140 they'll be stronger for it and actually the teacher shouldn't um intervene in any way of course

00:34:51.140 the upper classes in britain are more likely to get involved in the military but in the lower class

00:34:58.320 schools in britain as well you see what you see here which is the teachers are just not paying as

00:35:03.640 much attention so the boys are naturally getting their education on the side not exactly what the

00:35:08.520 teachers had in mind but in fact if there is a war or if you need to send military

00:35:14.260 you know send males into the military it may be exactly what the teachers have in mind 0.63

00:35:19.820 unconsciously right so i mean joyce what are the implications of of your research i mean i know

00:35:24.940 you're primarily describing what's going on but uh what can say parents or educators do with this

00:35:31.780 knowledge and how they educate or rear boys and girls okay well i think the first thing is to kind of

00:35:39.380 think that there are natural tendencies that boys and girls have now people would argue with me and

00:35:45.080 say oh well it's the tv that is teaching these tendencies or adults are somehow you know passing

00:35:51.640 these tendencies on whatever it is by three years of age boys and girls are being socialized in two

00:35:58.540 different worlds and i feel very strongly that that's the case because i see it in in real life

00:36:03.200 and so therefore whatever you think are the origins of these sex differences by the time

00:36:09.240 children become adults they have very very different ways of thinking about the world and about each

00:36:15.680 other so when people say oh my gosh what's going on you know the men are dominant to the women in 0.62

00:36:20.660 this organization something must be wrong or what is it you have these uh young men in the military and

00:36:27.400 um they don't feel that comfortable when you put young women into the military what what is going on

00:36:32.820 what's happening or you look at the fact that you know men are um being asked to stay home and you

00:36:39.180 know women are feeling that their husbands aren't doing enough and then you know you see the i know

00:36:44.500 my husband once i asked him to help out after a dinner party and he started vacuuming you know the

00:36:49.720 the table and the placemats so because i'd asked him to help and i thought oh my gosh what is the matter

00:36:54.760 with you you know and of course he hasn't had any experience cleaning up and he doesn't like cleaning

00:36:59.300 up so he just wanted to get it done so you have you know years and years and years of socialization

00:37:04.960 that's occurring from infancy that's different for boys and girls so you should expect that if you're

00:37:12.040 going to try to enter the other milieu um that it's going to be rough that it's going to be different

00:37:18.060 that you're going to not have the experiences so that that's one obvious um ramification and the

00:37:24.240 other one is i think a lot of people think that males really aren't aggressive that we've caused it

00:37:28.620 that there's some unnatural thing that we've done and it's just awful which is just absurd to me

00:37:34.180 having studied lots of other non-human primate species um and the other is this idea of girls 0.95

00:37:40.260 being so sweet you know girls need to attain status those who have the highest status are the ones that 1.00

00:37:45.540 live the longest that's true for boys that's true for girls so it makes sense to fight over status 0.85

00:37:50.620 however you can get there and this idea that you know oh yes go to school and you'll find these

00:37:56.060 lovely best friends and everything will be really nice um is missing what's really going on underneath

00:38:01.900 it all and so i think there's a lot that parents could understand if they want to better help their

00:38:07.900 children and and be and be sympathetic and and help their children when they get to be adults

00:38:12.800 right well joyce has been a fascinating conversation where can people learn more about your book and your

00:38:17.060 work um um well i've published a lot of articles obviously um my book is is for sale um i have a

00:38:26.400 recent article that's just come out on um sex differences in reconciliation in sports in current

00:38:33.120 biology um so all of these are kind of looking at the dynamics of males when they're together at all

00:38:39.220 different ages and females when they're together at all different ages very good well joyce benenson

00:38:43.100 thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you very much my guest today was

00:38:47.560 joyce benenson she's the author of the book warriors and warriors the survival of sexes and that's

00:38:51.740 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check out the show notes at aom.is

00:38:56.560 slash benenson for links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:39:00.620 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:39:14.900 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:39:18.760 this show i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher helps us out a lot thank you

00:39:23.080 so much for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:39:27.160 bye

00:39:31.040 no

00:39:32.040 a

00:39:32.080 no

00:39:32.680 a

00:39:33.200 oh

00:39:35.000 no

00:39:46.920 no

00:39:47.180 yeah

00:39:51.620 no

00:39:53.680 no

00:39:53.800 no

00:39:54.260 no

00:39:54.880 no

00:39:55.800 no

00:39:56.140 no

00:39:56.900 no

The Art of Manliness - August 26, 2016

#229： How Men and Women Socialize Differently

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript