Even though women and men usually focus on their differences, according to UNC psychology professor Zlatan Krizan, who analyzed over 100 studies including more than 12 million people, there’s almost an 80% overlap for 75% of our psychological characteristics. In reality, men and women are much more alike than different when it comes to IQ, personality traits, well-being, satisfaction in life, stress, morality, etc. The research did identify 10 traits where there’s a significant gender difference: men are more aggressive, and obviously more masculine, while women form closer attachments to friends and are more feminine and sensitive to pain. The main reason we see so much difference, aside from the obvious physical differences, is due to our focusing on the extremes. For example, many more men than women are in prison for violence and wars are started and fought by men, so we see those as representing men in general, but for the average man and woman the difference in aggressiveness is not very great. So too for the vast majority of our traits. We’re more alike than different, though as the French say, Vive la difference!

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