ABSTRACT
During the past decade, communication scholars have engaged in a heated debate about sex differences in communication. Whereas one group of scholars suggests that sex differences are large and culturally based, another group maintains that sex differences are small and overblown (Wood & Dindia, 1998). Virtually lost in this debate is a serious consideration of whether sex differences are partly biological in nature and have evolutionary origins, regardless of the magnitude of these differences. Based on an examination of the communication literature on sex differences, Andersen (1998) suggested that the field of communication is in biological denial. This chapter is an effort to restore some intellectual balance by examining research that shows that a number of sex differences may, indeed, have a biological basis.
