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Understanding misunderstanding: a study of sex differences in meaning attribution

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Abstract

There are biologically based sex differences in verbal abilities and in neuropsychological systems of verbal processing. Measurement of observable behaviour, however, does not say much about sex differences in the internal, semantic processing of verbal material. The present study, which was conducted in Canada, China and Russia, investigated sex differences in connotative meaning attribution to the most common concepts using an object scale symmetry in the choice of the nouns and bipolar adjectives (projective semantic method). The results showed that males had a tendency to estimate reality- and work-related concepts more negatively and social- and physical attractors more positively than women. The paper hypothesizes that at the level of the most fundamental semantic processing men favour more exceptional objects than women, and women favour more predictable objects, including rules and routines.

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Notes

  1. Russian “nihilism” might be due to the high rate of depression in Russia: in 2004 the World Health Organization reported that suicide rates in Russia are double that of Western countries.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the members of the Department of Psychology, McMaster University: Ms. Ann Hollingshead for making this study possible; our students Kristine Espiritu, Chandrima Bandyopadhyay, Samira Patel, Vanita Marques, Iris Wen Wen, Doreen Wing Han Au, Ambreen Tahir, Azfar Ahmad Tahir, Polly Cheng and Jennifer Bossio for the hard work of in administration of the methods. The author is also grateful for the suggestions of Dr. Bernhard Hommel and Dr. William Sulis, which helped to improve the readability of the paper.

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  1. Collective Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, McMaster University, 92 Bowman St., Hamilton, ON, L8S 2T6, Canada

    Ira Trofimova

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  1. Ira Trofimova
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Correspondence to Ira Trofimova.

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Trofimova, I. Understanding misunderstanding: a study of sex differences in meaning attribution. Psychological Research 77, 748–760 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-012-0462-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-012-0462-8

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