No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy • Hacker News Board

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#141

Post by cjohansson » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

lazyguy2 wrote: post #140

anon1m0us wrote: post #84

It's amazing that something so sexist could have been suggested without backlash. Imagine if studies indicated that low testosterone limited or in some way hindered another desirable human capability. People have been fired for it and reputations ruined. Suggesting men are emotionally stunted. Oh that's fine.

It's not sexist to suggest that testosterone impacts the body and mind. Male hormones exist for a reason and one of those big reasons is to impact behavior in various ways, including sex drive. What is sexist is assuming testosterone is responsible for autism and acting on that 'knowledge' without proof in some manner that impacts other people's lives.

If their sample did not inlude autistic men you can’t really draw any conclusions about autism from this study

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#142

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:59 AM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #84

It's amazing that something so sexist could have been suggested without backlash. Imagine if studies indicated that low testosterone limited or in some way hindered another desirable human capability. People have been fired for it and reputations ruined. Suggesting men are emotionally stunted. Oh that's fine.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar.

I understand the feeling you're expressing completely. But if you just import this resentment into the thread in an unprocessed way, it acidifies discussion and makes it harder for people to be thoughtful and share information across divides. Not just the gender-ideological divide, but any divide.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21139988.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#143

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:03 AM UTC

JetBen wrote: post #122

Ok cool, so I'm allowed to be a man again? Or is that still unacceptable according to PC rules?

Please be the kind of man who doesn't do this here.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#144

Post by djsumdog » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:12 AM UTC

tomlock wrote: post #80

ve55 wrote: post #9

>In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.” I don't see how this is related, unless you think the only 'maleness' that can exist in a brain is testosterone levels. There are so many things that could be tested and analyzed here besides testosterone levels.

What's cool is that if people take a more nuanced view of gender and sex than saying it can be measured by one test with only two options, it means they can't take the narrow view that either of those things are binary. Here's hoping!

I don't think that's what's being suggested at here at all. In the past few years, there has been an overemphasis on "maleness" being bad and leading to negative. In a lot of western social history (and even a lot of eastern societies) there has always been the concept of "the divine feminine" (Mother earth, goddesses and so fourth).

We've seen the growing emphasis of bad men and toxic masculinity; as if the man has a propensity for toxicity (anecdotally we've all known toxic people who were both men and women. They might generally be toxic in different ways, but that does change that no biological sex has a monopoly on being shitty human beings).

I think what's more interesting from the study is all the statements about correlation with small samples sizes. As mentioned by other comments, even this study doesn't seem remotely conclusive. It's focused on testosterone, because men generally have way more of it. I think it's more of a conversation starter on more research that should be done than anything else.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#145

Post by goblin89 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:12 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #138

goblin89 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does anger exist? Personally I can’t see how anger can be anything else but a manifestation of certain underlying fear as a defensive response. (That said, those emotions seem to be conventionally recognized as mostly unrelated.)

I'd like to see Yoda cite his sources on that "fear leads to anger" thing. This whole construction that it's impossible to react negatively to something without being motivated by fear is, IMO, unsubstantiated at best. It's entirely possible to dislike something or be irritated by it without fearing it.

Like I wrote—it is my personal (and layperson’s to boot) view, I can only cite sources that treat them as unrelated emotions.

I distinguish between fear as in immediate flight response, and fear as in deeper insecurity or non-obvious harm avoidance, including things like social status preservation.

I would not bundle reflecting negatively among all that, though.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#146

Post by djsumdog » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

moosey wrote: post #105

What I'm more interested in seeing is whether or not being in a dominant group in society reduces empathy. Historically, we might have looked at the lack of empathy of specific groups and made assumptions about the group in general, but perhaps it simply has to do with whether or not that group finds itself dominant in society whether it be economically, politically, or socially. All of these groups in Western societ…

How do you accurately measure empathy though? I'm not sure I agree with the methods they used in this study.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#147

Post by username90 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #127

Another victim in the "replication crisis" bloodbath for psychology. Personally, I'm probably going to wait 5 years before I believe any psychology science claim. Especially if it confirms something I already believe in :)

Testosterone increases blood flow, it could be that the participants taking it got more alert meaning better scores but that testosterone also worsens results for similar alertness levels.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#148

Post by lanstin » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #144

tomlock wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's cool is that if people take a more nuanced view of gender and sex than saying it can be measured by one test with only two options, it means they can't take the narrow view that either of those things are binary. Here's hoping!

I don't think that's what's being suggested at here at all. In the past few years, there has been an overemphasis on "maleness" being bad and leading to negative. In a lot of western social history (and even a lot of eastern societies) there has always been the concept of "the divine feminine" (Mother earth, goddesses and so fourth). We've seen the growing emphasis of bad men and toxic masculinity; as if the man has…

Toxic masculinity isn't "being masculine is bad" it's "being so caught up in social stereotypes of supposed masculinity that you become bad." Toxic masculinity vs. healthy masculinity. At least in people that use the phrase seriously that I've interacted with conversationally. Not to dispute that some people think maleness is inherently bad (or that the supposed duality of gender reflects a supposed duality of morality, what ever the sign of correlation). Those simplistic thinkers are very persistent.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#149

Post by lanstin » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

tomlock wrote: post #132

microcolonel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the impression that this is a misconception. 50 years ago, "programmer" was a different job. Imagine if executives were just called secretaries now and that's a decent analogy for what I think happened to programmers and architects.

I'm of the impression that back in 1959 when COBOL was released, with a team of 7 designers with 3 women on it, based off the groundwork laid by Grace Hopper, that the technical skill required to be a programmer was actually much higher, and that the women involved in coding were making very technical decisions about that field.

Yeah, I'm of the impression that the intellect required to do software now is much lower - no need to understand bits and bytes or to do math, just sling a bunch of libraries together with glue code from stack over flow and voila a ML system to categorize trouble tickets. Understanding the distinction between the reals and the IEEE double floats is alas long since vanished.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#150

Post by another-one-off » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

lanstin wrote: post #148

djsumdog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what's being suggested at here at all. In the past few years, there has been an overemphasis on "maleness" being bad and leading to negative. In a lot of western social history (and even a lot of eastern societies) there has always been the concept of "the divine feminine" (Mother earth, goddesses and so fourth). We've seen the growing emphasis of bad men and toxic masculinity; as if the man has…

Toxic masculinity isn't "being masculine is bad" it's "being so caught up in social stereotypes of supposed masculinity that you become bad." Toxic masculinity vs. healthy masculinity. At least in people that use the phrase seriously that I've interacted with conversationally. Not to dispute that some people think maleness is inherently bad (or that the supposed duality of gender reflects a supposed duality of morali…

I'm struggling to think of any aspects of masculinity that I could safely class as 'healthy' in the current climate.

For example, traditionally the view that males should be providers for the family would have been considered a healthy aspect of masculinity. That doesn't go unchallenged any more; for example there is a real concern out there that men are too competitive and effective at securing high paid jobs.

It is an anecdote I suppose, but those involved in the gender activist communities don't seem to allow such a thing as 'healthy masculinity' because it supposes there is something positive can be exclusively/predominantly masculine and the girls don't get involved. Bit of a non-starter as ideas go.