He Thought, She Thought
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He Thought, She Thought
Q: As a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of California,
San Francisco, you've drawn some strange conclusions about "The
Female Brain," to borrow the title of your debut book, which argues
that a woman's brain structure explains a good deal of her behavior,
including a penchant for gossiping and talking on the phone
The hormone of intimacy is oxytocin, and when women talk to each other,
they get a rush of it. For teen girls especially, when they're
talking about who's hooking up with whom, who's not talking to
whom, who you like and don't like - that's bedrock, that excites
the girl's brain.
You make it sound as if female friendship and affection is just a
search for oxytocin.
Sixth-grade teachers will tell you that girls get up and go to the
bathroom together; girls say they have to go at the same time. They
need to go off and intimately exchange the important currency of their
day, which increases their oxytocin and dopamine levels.
Your book cites a study claiming that women use about 20,000 words a
day, while men use about 7,000.
The real phraseology of that should have been that a woman has many
more communication events a day - gestures, words, raising of your
eyebrows.
Are you concerned that you are rehabilitating outdated gender
stereotypes that portray women as chatterboxes ruled by female
hormones?
A stereotype always has an aspect of truth to it, or it wouldn't be a
stereotype. I am talking about the biological basis behind behaviors
that we all know about.
More...from the NY Times (a free login is required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10wwln_q4.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin