Thinking Critically about Research on Sex and Gender

Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., is a clinical and research psychologist and Lecturer at Harvard University. She graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and has won teaching awards from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations as a Professor at the University of Toronto and from Harvard. She is the author of ten books -- including They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal, Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship, The Myth of Women's Masochism, Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman's Guide to Surviving in the Academic World—and dozens of papers. She was a winner of a Distinguished Career Award and a Christine Ladd-Franklin Award from the Association for Women in Psychology, a Toronto YWCA Women of Distinction Award, an American Psychological Association Eminent Woman Psychologist Award, and a Canadian Association for Women in Science Woman of the Year Award. Jeremy Caplan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta. He received his doctorate at Brandeis University in Neuroscience. His research focuses on the behavioral and brain basis of human memory from a variety of approaches including methods of experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and mathematical modeling. In 2008, Dr. Caplan received the prestigious Alberta Ingenuity Fund New Faculty Award to study the effects of interference on memory.

• IntroductionA Brief Historical Perspective on Sex-Difference ResearchUsing Scientific Method to Study Sex and GenderAre Boys Better Than Girls at Math?Sex Differences in Spatial AbilitiesDo Females Have Better Verbal Abilities Than Males?Modern Research about Sex Differences in the BrainDo Hormones Make the Woman–or the Man?SexualityThe Myth of Women’s MasochismShould Relational Abilities Be Called “Dependency”?Sex Differences in AggressionMother-BlameBreaking the Cycle of Bias: Becoming an Informed Judge of Research