#1: Women were better at detecting expressions of disgust
#2: Men reported more loneliness earlier in life; women reported more of it later in life
#3: Men spent more time relaxing than women
#4: Women and men may speak different languages—sort of
#5: Gender personality differences showed up at a young age
Psychologists commonly use five overarching traits to describe people's personalities: extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.
A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology applied this Big Five personality framework to girls and boys (between the ages of 9 and 13), with the goal of understanding which personality traits showed the most divergence, and the most continuity, during these formative years.
The researchers found two key differences between boys and girls, described below:
Female early adolescents exhibited higher levels of conscientiousness than males. Females also showed a greater increase in conscientiousness from age 9 to 13 than males.
The researchers found that while both boys and girls exhibited low levels of neuroticism at age 9, it was boys who showed more decline in the trait over time than girls.
#6: Romance comes more easily to extraverted males than extraverted females, according to one study
Conclusion: Most psychologists agree that there are stable and predictable personality differences between the genders. How wide is the gap?
One study found that knowing the personality profile of an individual, without knowing his or her gender, made it possible to correctly guess his or her gender about 85% of the time. Personality and other psychological qualities aren't a dead giveaway to someone’s gender, but they're not a bad start either.l
