A meta‐analysis of sex differences in animal personality: no evidence for the greater male variability hypothesis

ABSTRACT The notion that men are more variable than women has become embedded into scientific thinking. For mental traits like personality, greater male variability has been partly attributed to biology, underpinned by claims that there is generally greater variation among males than females in non‐...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 2022-04, Vol.97 (2), p.679-707
Main Authors: Harrison, Lauren M., Noble, Daniel W. A., Jennions, Michael D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression
Animal behavior
Animals
Behavior, Animal - classification
Behavior, Animal - physiology
behaviour
Body Size - physiology
Dimorphism
Female
Gender aspects
Gender differences
greater male variability hypothesis
heterogamety
Humans
Male
Males
Men
Meta-analysis
Personality
Personality - classification
Personality - physiology
Phenotype
Sex Characteristics
Sex differences
Sexual dimorphism
Sexual selection
sexual size dimorphism
shared traits
Taxonomy
Variability
Variation
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Summary:ABSTRACT The notion that men are more variable than women has become embedded into scientific thinking. For mental traits like personality, greater male variability has been partly attributed to biology, underpinned by claims that there is generally greater variation among males than females in non‐human animals due to stronger sexual selection on males. However, evidence for greater male variability is limited to morphological traits, and there is little information regarding sex differences in personality‐like behaviours for non‐human animals. Here, we meta‐analysed sex differences in means and variances for over 2100 effects (204 studies) from 220 species (covering five broad taxonomic groups) across five personality traits: boldness, aggression, activity, sociality and exploration. We also tested if sexual size dimorphism, a proxy for sex‐specific sexual selection, explains variation in the magnitude of sex differences in personality. We found no significant differences in personality between the sexes. In addition, sexual size dimorphism did not explain variation in the magnitude of the observed sex differences in the mean or variance in personality for any taxonomic group. In sum, we find no evidence for widespread sex differences in variability in non‐human animal personality.
ISSN:1464-7931
1469-185X
DOI:10.1111/brv.12818