Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Torino, Italy.
PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e29265. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029265. Epub 2012 Jan 4.
Sex differences in personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from significant methodological limitations. We advance a set of guidelines for overcoming those limitations: (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five; (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors; and (c) assess global sex differences with multivariate effect sizes. We then apply these guidelines to a large, representative adult sample, and obtain what is presently the best estimate of global sex differences in personality.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.
The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.
人们认为，个性中的性别差异相对较小。然而，该领域的研究受到了显著的方法学限制。我们提出了一系列克服这些限制的指导方针：（a）使用比大五人格更高分辨率的方法来测量人格；（b）在潜在因素上估计性别差异；（c）用多元效应大小评估整体性别差异。然后，我们将这些准则应用于一个大型的、有代表性的成人样本，得出了目前对个性的整体性别差异的最佳估计。
方法/主要发现：使用 16PF 问卷从一个大型的美国样本（N=10261）中获得人格测量。使用多群组潜在变量模型来估计个体人格维度上的性别差异，然后将其汇总以得出多元效应大小（Mahalanobis D）。我们发现整体效应大小 D=2.71，这意味着男性和女性分布之间只有 10%的重叠。即使排除显示最大单变量 ES 的因素，整体效应大小也是 D=1.71（重叠 24%）。按照心理学标准，这些差异非常大。
认为男性和女性的人格特征只有微小差异的观点应该被拒绝，因为它基于不充分的方法。
