Harrison Lauren M, Noble Daniel W A, Jennions Michael D
Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, 46 Sullivans Creek Road, Canberra, ACT, 2600, Australia.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2022 Apr;97(2):679-707. doi: 10.1111/brv.12818. Epub 2021 Dec 14.
The notion that men are more variable than women has become embedded into scientific thinking. For mental traits like personality, greater male variability has been partly attributed to biology, underpinned by claims that there is generally greater variation among males than females in non-human animals due to stronger sexual selection on males. However, evidence for greater male variability is limited to morphological traits, and there is little information regarding sex differences in personality-like behaviours for non-human animals. Here, we meta-analysed sex differences in means and variances for over 2100 effects (204 studies) from 220 species (covering five broad taxonomic groups) across five personality traits: boldness, aggression, activity, sociality and exploration. We also tested if sexual size dimorphism, a proxy for sex-specific sexual selection, explains variation in the magnitude of sex differences in personality. We found no significant differences in personality between the sexes. In addition, sexual size dimorphism did not explain variation in the magnitude of the observed sex differences in the mean or variance in personality for any taxonomic group. In sum, we find no evidence for widespread sex differences in variability in non-human animal personality.
男性比女性更具变异性这一观念已深深扎根于科学思维之中。对于诸如个性等心理特质而言，男性更大的变异性部分归因于生物学因素，其依据是声称由于对雄性更强的性选择，在非人类动物中雄性的变异通常比雌性更大。然而，支持男性变异性更大的证据仅限于形态学特征，而且关于非人类动物类似个性行为的性别差异几乎没有相关信息。在此，我们对来自220个物种（涵盖五个广泛的分类群）的2100多项效应（204项研究）在大胆、攻击性、活动、社会性和探索这五个人格特质方面的均值和方差的性别差异进行了荟萃分析。我们还测试了两性体型差异（一种特定性别的性选择指标）是否能解释人格中性别差异程度的变化。我们发现两性在人格方面没有显著差异。此外，对于任何分类群而言，两性体型差异都无法解释在人格均值或方差中所观察到的性别差异程度的变化。总之，我们没有发现证据表明非人类动物人格变异性存在广泛的性别差异。
