Thursday, February 19, 2009

Men tolerate their peers better than women

This study by Benenson et al. was conducted to examine the often-cited conclusion that human females are more sociable than males. Its results certainly correlate with my own university experience. In studying students at a Northeastern university they concluded that:
Males were more likely than females to be satisfied with their roommates and were less bothered by their roommates' style of social interaction, types of interests, values, and hygiene, regardless of whether or not the roommates were selected for study because they were experiencing conflicts. Furthermore, males were less likely than females to switch roommates over the course of a year at three collegiate institutions. Finally, violation of a friendship norm produced a smaller negative effect on friendship belief in males than in females.
They authors maintain (this surprises me, if true) that their studies are the first to demonstrate that males, compared with females, display higher levels of tolerance for genetically unrelated same-sex individuals.

1 comment:

  1. That confirms my impression, not a published study though. My wife talks about male bonding but I say males are already bonded, it's females that need to work at bonding.

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