Delusions of Gender

Psychologist Cordelia Fine has a great new book out called Delusions of Gender. In it, she debunks a lot of the myths about so-called 'hard-wired' gender differences between boys and girls. Our brains are much more malleable than these myths suggest, and such perceived gender differences are likely either non-existent or the result of social pressures.

Fine wrote a nice summary of her book here, and there are two good reviews of her book here and here.  Below is an excerpt from a talk Fine recently gave.



Cordelia Fine: Discovering Sexism in Neuroscience

Learning Your Gender

Here's a comparison of the different words used in ads for boys’ toys and ads for girls’ toys.

(hat tip: Feminist Philosophers blog)

Moral Psych Out

Here are some links loosely related to moral psychology:

• Here's a decent explanation of Lawrence Kohlberg's psychological theory of moral development that we mentioned in class.
  
• Psychological research on our moral judgments is a lot wackier today. For instance, clean smells make us behave better, while smelling farts makes us judge more harshly.
  
• There's some great new research on moral development in children, too. Here's Rebecca Saxe's TED Talk:
  
  
• One large strand of psychological research is on the impact of emotions on our moral reasoning. Here's Jonathan Haidt's TED Talk on the emotional difference between conservatives and liberals:
  

Ethics of Care

Here's some stuff related to the ethics of care:

• Here's an excerpt from a video of Carol Gilligan explaining her work (the entire video is available here):
  
  
• For stuff on feminism in general, I highly recommend one of my favorite blogs: Feminist Philosophers.
• There's also a great new blog called What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy? It's devoted to short accounts from women of their experiences while pursuing a career in philosophy.
  
• The cartoon Rose Is Rose offers a funny-ish critique of reason-centered approaches to ethics: