Gender differerence in human empathy. Theories on the Timbergen four "why's"
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
The aim of this thesis is to gain knowledge about different perspectives concerning the reason for a gender difference of empathy in humans, favoring women. Empathy involves recognition of and reaction on emotions of other individuals. Over the years, considerable research has pointed out that women outperform men in most aspects of empathy, which means that in general, women have a higher developed empathy than men. The question to be answered in this thesis is why this gender difference of empathy in humans exists. Tinbergen (1963) claimed that why-questions in the biology can be answered in four different ways. Each answer can be true, and the answers do not deny another.\nThe first type of answer on the question why women have a higher level of empathy than men, concerns the individual development. Are women born with an advanced in empathy compared to men, or is this gender difference socially learned, and does it originate from cultural rules? After reviewing several studies that do agree with one of the opportunities, but do not deny the other theory, the conclusion is drawn that it is probably a combination of both.\nAnother view on the reason why women outperform men on empathy can be found in proximate mechanisms of empathy, like endocrine and neural differences between men and women. The masculine hormone testosterone is shown to inhibit empathy, while the feminine hormone oxytocin promotes empathic reactions to others. Also on a neural level there are several examples of gender differences that are involved in empathy.\nSubsequently, the evolution of the superiority of women in empathy, compared to men, is investigated. Therefore it would be interesting to compare various species on gender difference in empathy. Although, considerable research has been done on empathic abilities in animals, no gender differences have been investigated yet. This is why a theory is described about the evolution of empathy in general. De Waal (2006, 2008) compares the evolution of empathy with a Russian doll, where the core is developed first, and the outer layers are based on the inner ones. Emotional contagion is thought to be the primitive core of empathy. The next evolutionary step would be sympathic concern, followed by empathic-perceptive taking.\nThe last perception concerns the selection pressures that induced sexual selection of empathy in humans. There are several hypotheses described that are based on differences in reproductive strategies between men and women, on female-female competition, and on male-male competition. These are the Primary Caretaker Hypothesis, hypotheses about social relationships among females and relational aggression among another, theories about male-male competition, and a theory about the non-kin alliances that females are forced to make. Non of these hypotheses have proven to be true, however, they do have potential to be true. The theories do not exclude each other, a combination of hypotheses is a possibility. To learn more about the evolutionary history and the selection pressures concerning the gender difference of empathy, it would be interesting to do a comparative study with various species and various mating systems.
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,010 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».