Clearly, Vervet Monkeys Have Been Watching Too Much Television
When I finally got to my hotel last night, I saw Satoshi Kanazawa, author, with the late Alan S. Miller, of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do. And a good thing I did, because the bar was closed by the time I got downstairs, and he had a bottle of wine.
I'd forgotten that Satoshi had been blogging over at Psychology Today, the magazine my other friend, Kaja Perina, has really turned around. (Here's Satoshi with Kaja and my friend and her husband Nando Pelusi, whom she actually picked up [or rather, I think it was the other way around] at one of these ev psych conferences.)
Anyway, he had an interesting post, "Why do boys and girls prefer different toys?" -- detailing, surely to the great dismay of feminists, that it's not only human boys and girls who prefer different toys:
In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University and Melissa Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44 female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys' preference for each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did not differ in their preference for the neutral toys.Alexander and Hines's article contains a wonderful picture (reproduced here in full living color, courtesy of Gerianne M. Alexander) of a female vervet monkey conducting an anogenital inspection (examining the genital area of the doll in an attempt to determine whether it is male or female), as a girl might, and a male vervet monkey pushing the police car back and forth, as a boy might. If children's toy preferences were largely formed by gender socialization, as traditional sociologists claim, in which their parents give "gender-appropriate" toys to boys and girls, how can these male and female vervet monkeys have the same preferences as boys and girls? They were never socialized by humans, and they had never seen these toys before in their lives. Yet, not only did male and female vervet monkeys show the identical sex preference for toys, but how they played with these toys was also identical to how boys and girls might.
Satoshi reports that there's now another similar study out, with rhesus monkeys, with similar results in the boy monkeys' preferences. And I see this sort of division along toy lines in my neighbors' kids, a girl, 4, and a boy, 7.
Now, these kids are being raised by architect parents who don't allow them to watch television, and who didn't direct them in particular to any sort of toy, but the little boy gravitates (no, is pretty much mad for) transportation toys like planes and trucks, and dinosaurs, and building Lego forts, and the little girl plays mainly with dolls and a toy kitchen, and actually walks around their backyard carrying a purse! And not just *a* purse. She changes them. She carries a different tiny purse each day...around the backyard!
Two of my daughters prefer boy stuff-they are also on the autistic spectrum. Simon Baron-Cohen has hypothesized that autism is partly an over-maleness of brain development (also that 4/5 finger length stuff-tied to hormone levels in utero).
My only non-autistic child loves pink, dolls and girly stuff. She also loves the real microscope we gave them for Christmas. Genes provide the basic tendencies, but society does play a role in how these are played out.
Ruth at May 2, 2008 5:53 AM
Interesting! Both of my girls are kinda girly, but not fru-fru girly; #1 doesn't care for pink anything, while #2 will wear pink just as often as any other color. Neither one will wear lace anything (according to both, "it itches!"). Both played with dolls and stuffed toys pretty equally, but #2 also likes to build things with Legos, while #1 prefers reading, drawing, and listening to/playing music. #2 shows signs of being more mechanically inclined than #1. (I am more mechanically inclined than 2 of my brothers, both younger, and less so than my older brother, but we've both rebuilt car engines, and done extensive repairs on our cars, with help from another male friend, who actually is a mechanic!) All 3 of my brothers and I are excellent cooks, but I'm better in the dessert department than they are. We're also all musically inclined, although Brother #1 is the most adept at playing by ear.
Flynne at May 2, 2008 6:23 AM
Gee, do you think that ANYTHING upon which feminism depends will turn out to be true? Still waiting ...
Jay R at May 2, 2008 6:36 AM
I never played with dolls, they weirded me out (so did store mannekins). I only liked stuffed animal toys and real animals, lego, reading a lot, music. I never had a Barbie either. My ring finger is longer than my index finger, so I guess I've got too much testosterone!
Chrissy at May 2, 2008 6:43 AM
The last bit made me laugh - it's exactly how I was (and still am)!
I had purses which I'd fill with Barbie lip gloss and plastic play jewelry (why I needed to put it in the bag, not wear it, I don't know). I also had a ring that would flip open to reveal solid pineapple scented perfume for kids. These days it's Cole Haan patent leather purses, Lancome lipsticks and Molinard solid perfumes. My mom didn't give those things to me to make me girl-y, I wanted them! And still do! Just writing about this is making me want to go to Sephora.com and make an impulse purchase!!
I loved Legos, though I always built houses. I'd make bedrooms, t.v. rooms, private bathrooms. It was very intense. I discovered The Sims and it rekindled my love for designing houses - I can spend an entire day sitting in my Poang chair from IKEA building houses in The Sims. But Tonka trucks? Thomas the Train? NEVAH!
Gretchen at May 2, 2008 7:54 AM
Oldest of seven. Four brothers. The things we did to each other were only kept in check by a dad who was tougher than all five of us put together.
On another topic, looking at all my nieces and nephews, I think a lot of the disparity in boys vs girls in school is that boys develop slower. Starting most boys a year later than girls might be a good first step.
austin at May 2, 2008 8:05 AM
I loved, loved, loved dolls. Had a ton of 'em. Also had a dollhouse back in the day. My favorite color is still pink. Of course, I hate lace - itchy! - and these days my toy preferences lean more towards AV equipment and computers. And I loved Matchbox cars and comic books. (My ring and index fingers seem to be...exactly the same length. Hmmm.)
In my observation, the boys-liking-transportation-objects thing is hardwired; EVERY little boy I know has become obsessed with them in one way or another before the age of two. That having been said, a few months ago, there was a discussion of little boys' play preferences on one of the parenting blogs that I read, and several mothers had stories about their toddler boys who loved wearing high heels and tiaras and had then grown up to be big strapping manly men.
Amy, forgive me if I've asked this before, and it might be old hat to you, but have you read Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It? Click on my name to go to the Amazon page. (And no, it's not a men-are-underdeveloped book, I promise!)
marion at May 2, 2008 8:21 AM
This bit about the monkeys is kind of mind-bending actually. I've known for some time that boys' and girls' preferences in toys is pretty innate. However, I still assumed that they preferred these toys because the toys were representations of things in the real world that they are attracted to -- toy trucks as representations of real trucks, and baby dolls as representatives of real babies.
However, the monkeys can't possibly know what the toys represent in the adult human world. So the preference is even more hard-wired and fundemental than that! I don't know nearly enough about psychology or neurology to come up with a cogent explanation. It's a very interesting piece of data.
Cousin Dave at May 2, 2008 9:11 AM
My wife made an insightful comment over lunch today: "The whole nature vs. nurture debate can surely only be kept alive by people who have never had children."
Certainly our two kids came equipped with their very distinct personalities from day one. We have watched these unfold as they've grown older, and I hope we've guided them into the better paths suitable to their respective characters. But the characters themselves are very clearly original equipment.
bradley13 at May 2, 2008 9:11 AM
I bought that book, but I was a bit disappointed by it. I don't have it with me, but I seem to remember it as ev. psych lite, and a work of parasiting off a lot of other people's work, and in some cases, not really understanding what the researchers in question were doing.
Amy Alkon at May 2, 2008 9:59 AM
"The whole nature vs. nurture debate can surely only be kept alive by people who have never had children."
I fail to see how that is insightful. There are many trained research psychologists with children who are still trying to find the lines between nature and nurture. Having squeezed a child out does not make you any more or less of an expert on child psychology or the scientific basis of "nature vs nuture".
HabsFan at May 2, 2008 11:00 AM
HabsFan -- lighten up, you're not out of it yet!
moreta at May 2, 2008 12:14 PM
when band of brothers & TrueBlood come back on?? June!? TV is boring these days.
Candida Mcgaffey at April 13, 2011 8:05 AM
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