Sex differences in impulsivity: a meta-analysis.
By Catharine P Cross, L. Copping, Andrea Campbell. Psychological bulletin, 2011
861 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Men are overrepresented in socially problematic behaviors, such as aggression and criminal behavior, which have been linked to impulsivity. Our review of impulsivity is organized around the tripartite theoretical distinction between reward hypersensitivity, punishment hyposensitivity, and inadequate effortful control. Drawing on evolutionary, criminological, developmental, and personality theories, we predicted that sex differences would be most pronounced in risky activities with men demonstrating greater sensation seeking, greater reward sensitivity, and lower punishment sensitivity. We predicted a small female advantage in effortful control. We analyzed 741 effect sizes from 277 studies, including psychometric and behavioral measures. Women were consistently more punishment sensitive (d = -0.33), but men did not show greater reward sensitivity (d = 0.01). Men showed significantly higher sensation seeking on questionnaire measures (d = 0.41) and on a behavioral risk-taking task (d = 0.36). Questionnaire measures of deficits in effortful control showed a very modest effect size in the male direction (d = 0.08). Sex differences were not found on delay discounting or executive function tasks. The results indicate a stronger sex difference in motivational rather than effortful or executive forms of behavior control. Specifically, they support evolutionary and biological theories of risk taking predicated on sex differences in punishment sensitivity. A clearer understanding of sex differences in impulsivity depends upon recognizing important distinctions between sensation seeking and impulsivity, between executive and effortful forms of control, and between impulsivity as a deficit and as a trait.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5974b6ef9af8cf03bcef5582d75aed8bb51e76a5
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Citations in the corpus
- Are Women Really More Risk-Averse than Men? (2012, neutral): “Empirical studies suggest that from a very early age, children create simple mental categories and classifications according to presumed essences (Leslie 2008).”
- The Evolution of Culturally-Variable Sex Differences: Men and Women Are Not Always Different, but When They Are…It Appears Not to Result from Patriarchy or Sex Role Socialization (2015, background): “Instead, the prenatal masculinization (or not) of the human brain adaptively biases the development of future psychological traits, particularly in terms of risktaking (Byrnes et al. 1999), sensation-seeking (Cross et al. 2011), and systematizing-versus-empathizing (Baron-Cohen 2004).”
- Systematic review of psychometric proprieties of Barratt Impulsiveness Scale Version 11 (BIS-11). (2012, positive): “In recent meta-analysis, Cross et al. (2011) showed that men drive more recklessly and have higher death rate from no vehicle accidents than women.”
- Individual Differences in Risky Decision Making: A Meta‐analysis of Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity with the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (2014, background): “Dec. Making (2013) DOI: 10.1002/bdm apt to take risks and to self-report higher sensation seeking and impulsivity than women (e.g., Cross et al., 2011; de Haan et al., 2011), participant’s gender did not moderate the relation of personality with risk taking on BART.”