I do find it interesting...

Environmental factors (including social) are an important causal influence on neurological development and on behaviour.

When people find differences between male brains and female brains (or male behaviours and female behaviours) I always get to wondering how much of those differences are the fairly inevitable response to hormones and the like and how much of those differences are the fairly inevitable response to social factors (such as gender roles) that are NOT inevitable.

For example, if a boy is praised for exhibiting competitiveness and is mocked for persuing social harmony and a girl is praised for forsaking competitiveness to pursue social harmony then their differential history of reinforcement would be an important causal factor for the difference in male and female behaviour.

I'm also interested in the differences... Typically they are differences across averages. So lets say W is winning and S is maintaining social relationships.

Boys: W, W, W, W, W, W, S, S, S, S
Girls: S, S, S, S, S, S, W, W, W, W

(The notion here is that 6 out of 10 boys went for winning and 6 out of 10 girls went for social relationships).

What does this show us? Some conclusions we could draw:

- Boys tend to go for winning rather than social relationships (well yes, but only just!)
- Girls tend to go for social relationships rather than winning (well yes, but only just!)

What seems most interesting is: Why?

Even if there is something in common in the W brains and something in common in the S brains this doesn't seem to help (of course we would expect that when behaviour is different neurology is different). How did their brains get to be different?

Could be maturation with respect to hormones and the like...
Could be part of socialisation into a culture.

E.g., give little boys guns to play with and give little girls dolls.

I've never had the problem with 'fear of success'. My Mother didn't really raise me according to traditional gender stereotypes, however.

I have read something on the influence of movies such as 'Kill Bill' and 'The Matrix' which are typically seen as liberating for women... These films have been critiqued with respect to their possible role in increasing female violence, however.