Boys and their toys? It’s biological, not social

April 7, 2008 on 6:42 pm | Friedrich Braun | Evolution, Feminism , Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity , Psychology | | Email This Post | Print this Post

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent

Boys prefer playing with cars to dolls because of basic biological differences rather than social pressures, scientists say.

The males monkeys played with the ‘boys’ toys while the females played with ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ toys.

They believe this suggests that in most cases boys have an innate predisposition for masculine toys, which is then reinforced by what they learn from their parents, friends and wider society.

Dr Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, studied a group of captive, mainly juvenile male and female rhesus monkeys.

The animals were offered two categories of toys - ones with wheels such as wagons and other vehicles, and various dolls and cuddly toys including such as a Winnie the Pooh.

In a series of videoed experiments one of each type of toy was placed 30ft apart to see which monkeys would be attracted to which category.
In most cases the monkeys formed a group around one of the toys and eventually one of them would snatch it and run away.

Dr Wallen and colleagues, found the 11 males spent more time playing with wheeled toys, while the 23 females played with both the cuddly and wheeled toys equally.

Their conclusion contradicts those of the dominant psychological theory that the preference of boys for vehicles and toy soldiers and that of girls for dolls is down to social rather than innate influences.

Dr Wallen, whose study is published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, and highlighted on NewScientist. com, said: “A five-year-old boy whose compatriots discover has a collection of Barbies is likely to take a lot of flak.”

He added his team chose to study young monkeys as their behaviour was less likely to be determined by social pressures than children.

“They are not subject to advertising. They are not subject to parental encouragement, they are not subject to peer chastisement. ”

The study’s findings support those of previous research on green vervet monkeys, which also showed males favoured more masculine toys.

Dr Gerianne Alexander, a psychologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who led the vervet monkey study, said basic biological differences between sexes influence such choices before learned preferences.

She told NewScientist. com: “Together the results are compelling. There is likely to be a biological tendency that is amplified by society.”

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Powered by WordPress.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^

Donate towards my web hosting bill!