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The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: 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. SIGNIFICANCE: The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.
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“Yet the generalizability of these sex -linked distinctions has been questioned (Del Giudice et al. 2012; Plug et al. 2021; Dewi et al. 2024)”
From Examining the linguistic and behavioural patterns of gender identity in women with dissociative identity disorder (2025) · cites this paper as Del Giudice et al. 2012
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Metadata
- Authors
- Del Giudice, M., Booth, T., & Irwing, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Manchester (GB)
- ORCID
- Booth, Tom
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2012-01-04
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e29265
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3251566
- OpenAlex
- W2156603052
- Cited by
- 256
- References
- 82
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 67 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 16.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- ArTS Archivio della ricerca di Trieste (University of Trieste https://www.units.it/) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Institutional Research Information System University of Turin (University of Turin) (submittedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Regione Piemonte (L.R.n.4./2006, 4/2006)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
- Keywords
- sex differences in personality, Big Five personality traits, 16PF, latent variable models, multigroup analysis, methodological limitations
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Personality, Personality Inventory, Personality Tests, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Sex Characteristics, Sex Differentiation, Mars, Venus
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