Men and women differ in their interest and willingness to participate in exercise and sports science research.

Unequal proportions of male and female participants in exercise research might be attributed, in part, to differences in interest and willingness to participate. We tested if men and women are equally interested and willing to undergo exercise research procedures and if they consider different factors when deciding to participate. Two samples completed an online survey. Sample 1 (129 men, 227 women) responded to advertisements on social media and survey-sharing websites. Sample 2 (155 men, 504 women) was comprised of undergraduate psychology students. In both samples, men were significantly more interested to learn their muscle mass amount, running speed, jump height, and ball throwing ability, and more willing to receive electrical shocks, cycle or run until exhaustion, complete strength training that causes muscle soreness, and take muscle-building supplements (all p ≤ 0.013, d = 0.23-0.48). Women were significantly more interested to learn their flexibility, and more willing to complete surveys, participate in stretching and group aerobics interventions, and participate in home exercise with online instruction (all p ≤ 0.021, d = 0.12-0.71). Women rated the following significantly more important when deciding to participate: study's implications for society; personal health status; confidence in own abilities; potential anxiety during testing; type of research facility; time to complete study; and invasiveness, pain/discomfort, and possible side effects of procedures (all p < 0.05, d = 0.26-0.81). Differences in interest and willingness to participate in research probably contribute to different proportions of men and women as participants in exercise research. Knowledge of these differences might help researchers develop recruitment strategies aimed at encouraging both men and women to participate in exercise studies.

Societies also prioritize female survival.

We extend Benenson et al.'s hypothesis from the individual level to the societal level. Because women have highly limited reproductive rates, societies have generally prioritized female survival and regarded males as expendable. We describe various lines of evidence that are consistent with this hypothesis, and we offer additional predictions about differential attitudes toward male versus female endangerment.

Males and Females Pace Differently in High School Cross-Country Races.

Deaner, RO and Lowen, A. Males and females pace differently in high school cross-country races. J Strength Cond Res 30(11): 2991-2997, 2016-Previous studies have demonstrated that men are more likely than women to slow in the marathon, but it is unknown whether the sex difference in pacing occurs for other race distances. This study addressed this question by analyzing the 5-km Virginia State Championship high school cross-country race for the years 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014, which encompassed 3,948 performances. The pacing measure was percentage change in speed from mile 1 to mile 2. Across all runners, women (9.1%) slowed significantly (p = 0.002) more than men (8.7%), although the magnitude of the difference was trivial (effect size [ES] = -0.10). However, when women and men in physiologically equated finishing time groups (e.g., <17:00 for men; <19:03 for women) were compared, men slowed significantly more (p < 0.001) in all 4 groups, and the differences were nontrivial (ESs range 0.27-0.92). Because glycogen depletion is irrelevant for 5 km performances, these results challenge the hypothesis that the sex difference in pacing is due to males' greater susceptibility to glycogen depletion. These results instead support the hypothesis that the sex difference in pacing partly reflects a sex difference in some aspect of decision making, such as overconfidence, risk perception, or willingness to tolerate discomfort. Coaches and athletes are advised to consider individual variation in these characteristics when planning training and racing.

Distance running as an ideal domain for showing a sex difference in competitiveness.

Men are over-represented in the arts, sciences, and sports. This has been hypothesized to reflect an evolved male predisposition for enduring competitiveness or long-term motivation to improve one's performance and "show-off." Evidence for this hypothesis is equivocal, however, because there are viable alternative explanations for men's dominance in most cultural display domains. Here, I argue that distance running is an ideal domain for addressing this issue. Distance running is ideal because it indicates enduring competitiveness, allows objective comparisons, and is accessible, acceptable, and popular for both men and women. I review recent studies and present new data showing that substantially more men than women run relatively fast in the U.S., that this sex difference in relative performance can be attributed, at least in part, to men's greater training motivation, and that this pattern has been stable for several decades. Distance running thus provides compelling evidence for an evolved male predisposition for enduring competitiveness. I conclude with suggestions regarding how variation in achievement motivation can be informed by considering how evolved predispositions interact with environmental and social conditions.

Mirroring of attention by neurons in macaque parietal cortex.

Macaques, like humans, rapidly orient their attention in the direction other individuals are looking. Both cortical and subcortical pathways have been proposed as neural mediators of social gaze following, but neither pathway has been characterized electrophysiologically in behaving animals. To address this gap, we recorded the activity of single neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) of rhesus macaques to determine whether and how this area might contribute to gaze following. A subset of LIP neurons mirrored observed attention by firing both when the subject looked in the preferred direction of the neuron, and when observed monkeys looked in the preferred direction of the neuron, despite the irrelevance of the monkey images to the task. Importantly, the timing of these modulations matched the time course of gaze-following behavior. A second population of neurons was suppressed by social gaze cues, possibly subserving task demands by maintaining fixation on the observed face. These observations suggest that LIP contributes to sharing of observed attention and link mirror representations in parietal cortex to a well studied imitative behavior.

Sex Differences in Competitiveness in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).

Sex differences in the use of competitive tactics have been well established. Although many factors may contribute to these sex differences, according to social role theory (SRT), stereotypes and expectations about men's and women's typical social roles are crucial. We addressed the potential impact of social roles by studying massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), a setting where individuals represent themselves with avatars and thus enjoy the opportunity to compete without regard to the typical expectations and behaviors associated with men's and women's roles. We surveyed players via MTurk (63 women, 191 men) and Reddit (166 women, 1,326 men) regarding their frequency of engaging in five competitive behaviors and the sex and role of their primary avatar. As expected, there were reliable sex differences in competitiveness: men were more likely than women to engage in player-versus-player duels (MTurk d = 0.19; Reddit d = 0.51), do solo runs of difficult content (0.30, 0.35), and work to acquire expensive items (0.32, 0.19); women were more likely than men to seek in-game awards (-0.38, -0.36) and spend real-world money on expensive microtransactions (-0.16, -0.27). Contrary to SRT, these sex differences in forms of competitive behavior were generally unrelated to players' chosen avatar sex or avatar role. These results instead indicate that sex differences in competitiveness largely reflect evolved predispositions.

Neural correlates of social target value in macaque parietal cortex.

Animals as diverse as arthropods [1], fish [2], reptiles [3], birds [4], and mammals, including primates [5], depend on visually acquired information about conspecifics for survival and reproduction. For example, mate localization often relies on vision [6], and visual cues frequently advertise sexual receptivity or phenotypic quality [5]. Moreover, recognizing previously encountered competitors or individuals with preestablished territories [7] or dominance status [1, 5] can eliminate the need for confrontation and the associated energetic expense and risk for injury. Furthermore, primates, including humans, tend to look toward conspecifics and objects of their attention [8, 9], and male monkeys will forego juice rewards to view images of high-ranking males and female genitalia [10]. Despite these observations, we know little about how the brain evaluates social information or uses this appraisal to guide behavior. Here, we show that neurons in the primate lateral intraparietal area (LIP), a cortical area previously linked to attention and saccade planning [11, 12], signal the value of social information when this assessment influences orienting decisions. In contrast, social expectations had no impact on LIP neuron activity when monkeys were not required to make a choice. These results demonstrate for the first time that parietal cortex carries abstract, modality-independent target value signals that inform the choice of where to look.

Risk Taking Runners Slow More in the Marathon.

Much research has explored the physiological, energetic, environmental, and psychological factors that influence pacing in endurance events. Although this research has generally neglected the role of psychological variation across individuals, recent studies have hinted at its importance. Here we conducted an online survey of over 1,300 marathon runners, testing whether any of five psychological constructs - competitiveness, goal achievement, risk taking in pace (RTP), domain-specific risk taking, and willingness to suffer in the marathon - predicted slowing in runners' most recent marathons. Analyses revealed that RTP - the extent to which runners agreed that they began the marathon at a pace that was so fast that it would jeopardize their capacity to maintain this pace throughout the event - was a robust predictor of marathon slowing. RTP proved a substantial predictor even in regression models controlling for the other psychological constructs, training, experience, and other known pacing correlates. This result suggests that marathoners consider trade-offs when making pacing decisions, and that individuals vary in their pacing decision making.

Monkeys pay per view: adaptive valuation of social images by rhesus macaques.

Individuals value information that improves decision making. When social interactions complicate the decision process, acquiring information about others should be particularly valuable. In primate societies, kinship, dominance, and reproductive status regulate social interactions and should therefore systematically influence the value of social information, but this has never been demonstrated. Here, we show that monkeys differentially value the opportunity to acquire visual information about particular classes of social images. Male rhesus macaques sacrificed fluid for the opportunity to view female perinea and the faces of high-status monkeys but required fluid overpayment to view the faces of low-status monkeys. Social value was highly consistent across subjects, independent of particular images displayed, and only partially predictive of how long subjects chose to view each image. These data demonstrate that visual orienting decisions reflect the specific social content of visual information and provide the first experimental evidence that monkeys spontaneously discriminate images of others based on social status.

Reflexive social attention in monkeys and humans.

For humans, social cues often guide the focus of attention. Although many nonhuman primates, like humans, live in large, complex social groups, the extent to which human and nonhuman primates share fundamental mechanisms of social attention remains unexplored. Here, we show that, when viewing a rhesus macaque looking in a particular direction, both rhesus macaques and humans reflexively and covertly orient their attention in the same direction. Specifically, when performing a peripheral visual target detection task, viewing a monkey with either its eyes alone or with both its head and eyes averted to one side facilitated the detection of peripheral targets when they randomly appeared on the same side. Moreover, viewing images of a monkey with averted gaze evoked small but systematic shifts in eye position in the direction of gaze in the image. The similar magnitude and temporal dynamics of response facilitation and eye deviation in monkeys and humans suggest shared neural circuitry mediating social attention.

Economic principles motivating social attention in humans.

We know little about the processes by which we evaluate the opportunity to look at another person. We propose that behavioural economics provides a powerful approach to understanding this basic aspect of social attention. We hypothesized that the decision process culminating in attention to another person follows the same economic principles that govern choices about rewards such as food, drinks and money. Specifically, such rewards are discounted as a function of time, are tradable for other rewards, and reinforce work. Behavioural and neurobiological evidence suggests that looking at other people can also be described as rewarding, but to what extent these economic principles apply to social orienting remains unknown. Here, we show that the opportunity to view pictures of the opposite sex is discounted by delay to viewing, substitutes for money and reinforces work. The reward value of photos of the opposite sex varied with physical attractiveness and was greater in men, suggesting differential utility of acquiring visual information about the opposite sex in men and women. Together, these results demonstrate that choosing whom to look at follows a general set of economic principles, implicating shared neural mechanisms in both social and non-social decision making.

Overall brain size, and not encephalization quotient, best predicts cognitive ability across non-human primates.

For over a century, various neuroanatomical measures have been employed as assays of cognitive ability in comparative studies. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether these measures actually correspond to cognitive ability. A recent meta-analysis of cognitive performance of a broad set of primate species has made it possible to provide a quantitative estimate of general cognitive ability across primates. We find that this estimate is not strongly correlated with neuroanatomical measures that statistically control for a possible effect of body size, such as encephalization quotient or brain size residuals. Instead, absolute brain size measures were the best predictors of primate cognitive ability. Moreover, there was no indication that neocortex-based measures were superior to measures based on the whole brain. The results of previous comparative studies on the evolution of intelligence must be reviewed with this conclusion in mind.

Fast men slow more than fast women in a 10 kilometer road race.

Background. Previous studies have demonstrated that men are more likely than women to slow in the marathon (footrace). This study investigated whether the sex difference in pacing occurs for a shorter race distance. Materials & Methods. Data were acquired from the Bolder Boulder 10 km road race for the years 2008-2013, which encompassed 191,693 performances. There were two pacing measures, percentage change in pace of the first 3 miles relative to the final 3.2 miles and percentage change in pace of the first mile relative to the final 5.2 miles. Pacing was analyzed as a continuous variable and as two categorical variables, as follows: "maintain the pace," defined as slowing <5% and "marked slowing," defined as slowing ≥10%. Results. Among the fastest (men < 48:40; women < 55:27) and second fastest (men < 53:54; women < 60:28) sex-specific finishing time sextiles, men slowed significantly more than women with both pacing measures, but there were no consistently significant sex differences in pacing among the slower four sextiles. For the fastest sextile, the odds for women were 1.96 (first pacing measure) and 1.36 (second measure) times greater than men to maintain the pace. For the fastest sextile, the odds for women were 0.46 (first measure) and 0.65 (second measure) times that of men to exhibit marked slowing. Multiple regression indicated that being older was associated with lesser slowing, but the sex difference among faster runners persisted when age was controlled. Conclusions. There was a sex difference in pacing during a 10 km race where glycogen depletion is not typically relevant. These results support the hypothesis that the sex difference in pacing partly reflects a sex difference in decision making.

Does the sex difference in competitiveness decrease in selective sub-populations? A test with intercollegiate distance runners.

Sex differences in some preferences and motivations are well established, but it is unclear whether they persist in selective sub-populations, such as expert financial decision makers, top scientists, or elite athletes. We addressed this issue by studying competitiveness in 1,147 varsity intercollegiate distance runners. As expected, across all runners, men reported greater competitiveness with two previously validated instruments, greater competitiveness on a new elite competitiveness scale, and greater training volume, a known correlate of competitiveness. Among faster runners, the sex difference decreased for one measure of competitiveness but did not decrease for the two other competitiveness measures or either measure of training volume. Across NCAA athletic divisions (DI, DII, DIII), the sex difference did not decrease for any competitiveness or training measure. Further analyses showed that these sex differences could not be attributed to women suffering more injuries or facing greater childcare responsibilities. However, women did report greater commitment than men to their academic studies, suggesting a sex difference in priorities. Therefore, policies aiming to provide men and women with equal opportunities to flourish should acknowledge that sex differences in some kinds of preferences and motivation may persist even in selective sub-populations.

Men are more likely than women to slow in the marathon.

UNLABELLED: Studies on nonelite distance runners suggest that men are more likely than women to slow their pace in a marathon. PURPOSE: This study determined the reliability of the sex difference in pacing across many marathons and after adjusting women's performances by 12% to address men's greater maximal oxygen uptake and also incorporating information on racing experience. METHODS: Data were acquired from 14 US marathons in 2011 and encompassed 91,929 performances. For 2929 runners, we obtained experience data from a race-aggregating Web site. We operationalized pace maintenance as the percentage change in pace observed in the second half of the marathon relative to the first half. Pace maintenance was analyzed as a continuous variable and as two categorical variables, as follows: "maintain the pace," defined as slowing <10%, and "marked slowing," defined as slowing ≥30%. RESULTS: The mean change in pace was 15.6% and 11.7% for men and women, respectively (P < 0.0001). This sex difference was significant for all 14 marathons. The odds for women were 1.46 (95% confidence interval, 1.41-1.50; P < 0.0001) times higher than men to maintain the pace and 0.36 (95% confidence interval, 0.34-0.38; P < 0.0001) times that of men to exhibit marked slowing. Slower finishing times were associated with greater slowing, especially in men (interaction, P < 0.0001). However, the sex difference in pacing occurred across age and finishing time groups. Making the 12% adjustment to women's performances lessened the magnitude of the sex difference in pacing but not its occurrence. Although greater experience was associated with less slowing, controlling for the experience variables did not eliminate the sex difference in pacing. CONCLUSIONS: The sex difference in pacing is robust. It may reflect sex differences in physiology, decision making, or both.

You can't teach speed: sprinters falsify the deliberate practice model of expertise.

Many scientists agree that expertise requires both innate talent and proper training. Nevertheless, the highly influential deliberate practice model (DPM) of expertise holds that talent does not exist or makes a negligible contribution to performance. It predicts that initial performance will be unrelated to achieving expertise and that 10 years of deliberate practice is necessary. We tested these predictions in the domain of sprinting. In Studies 1 and 2 we reviewed biographies of 15 Olympic champions and the 20 fastest American men in U.S. history. In all documented cases, sprinters were exceptional prior to initiating training, and most reached world class status rapidly (Study 1 median = 3 years; Study 2 = 7.5). In Study 3 we surveyed U.S. national collegiate championships qualifiers in sprinters (n = 20) and throwers (n = 44). Sprinters recalled being faster as youths than did throwers, whereas throwers recalled greater strength and throwing ability. Sprinters' best performances in their first season of high school, generally the onset of formal training, were consistently faster than 95-99% of their peers. Collectively, these results falsify the DPM for sprinting. Because speed is foundational for many sports, they challenge the DPM generally.

U.S. masters track participation reveals a stable sex difference in competitiveness.

It is well established that men are more likely than women to engage in direct competition, but it is unclear if this reflects social structural conditions or evolved predispositions. These hypotheses can be addressed by quantifying competitiveness in sports and testing if the sex difference is decreasing over time in the U.S., a society where social roles have converged. Study 1 assessed participation and the occurrence of relatively fast performances by masters runners (40-74 years old) at recent road races and track meets. Fast performances occurred over 20 times more often at track meets than at road races. Women comprised 55% of finishers at roads races but only 15-28% of finishers at track meets. Thus, the sex difference in masters track participation can serve as a measure of the sex difference in competitiveness. Study 2 used data from national championship meets and yearly rankings lists to test whether the sex difference in masters track participation decreased from 1988-2012. The sex difference decreased overall, but there was no evidence of change since the late 1990s. Therefore, the sex difference in the willingness to engage in direct sports competition appears to reflect both social structural conditions and evolved predispositions.

Misrepresentations of evolutionary psychology in sex and gender textbooks.

Evolutionary psychology has provoked controversy, especially when applied to human sex differences. We hypothesize that this is partly due to misunderstandings of evolutionary psychology that are perpetuated by undergraduate sex and gender textbooks. As an initial test of this hypothesis, we develop a catalog of eight types of errors and document their occurrence in 15 widely used sex and gender textbooks. Consistent with our hypothesis, of the 12 textbooks that discussed evolutionary psychology, all contained at least one error, and the median number of errors was five. The most common types of errors were "Straw Man," "Biological Determinism," and "Species Selection." We conclude by suggesting improvements to undergraduate sex and gender textbooks.