ABSTRACT
If you have been reading the chapters in order and just finished the preceding two chapters that examined genetic, hormonal, and brain-based hypotheses about sex differences in cognition, you probably spent much of the time considering alternative hypotheses. Whenever I teach this material to college classes, I always find that there are students who simply cannot wait to point out the ways in which differing life experiences for males and females could be used to explain the data. Hypotheses that favor the nurture side of the nature-nurture controversy are considered in this chapter and the following chapter. In thinking about the way societal effects influence how males and females think, keep in mind the psychobiosocial framework that is used throughout this book. How might biological differences between the sexes be contributing to societal expectations, and how might societal expectations be creating or increasing cognitive sex differences? These two approaches are synthesized and conclusions about the relative merits of each are presented in the concluding chapter.
