ABSTRACT
This chapter provides descriptions of the six explanations for sex differences. Theories that focus on learning in a sociocultural context as being responsible for sex differences, especially differences in cognitive and behavioral traits, are known as social role theories. The most widely recognized theory of sex differences in cognition and behavior is known as original social role theory, also sometimes called “core social role theory”. The concept of social roles can be thought of as being similar to actors learning parts in a play. In the latter part of the 20th century, Fausto-Sterling recognized that the original social role theory predicts that few if any universal sex differences in behavior should exist. Until the early 1990s, Eagly and Wood were prominent proponents of the original social role theory. Many evolutionary theorists have recognized that the primary way genes affect cognition and behavior is by making alterations in the brain.
