Thread by @SpeciesTypical

Across cultures, women are *much* higher than men on fearful personality traits. Why?

Our new SPPS paper—led by Joe Manson w/ Kristine Chua, @rodriguezNina_ @michael_barlev @durkeepk—provides an answer

tl;dr the sex diff in fear is mediated by that in physical strength

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Evidence supports the hypothesis that, b/c weaker people r more vulnerable 2 threats, the fear system’s activation threshold is calibrated 2 relative strength

@rodriguezNina_ & I showed this within sex: strong women(men) > fear than weak women(men)

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drive.google.com/file/d/1abfm11…

In their recent Psych Science paper, @NicholasTKerry1 & @DamianMurray1 hypothesized that the calibration of fear & anxiety to strength might explain sex diffs in these psychological traits.

They found partial support for this hypothesis:

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journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

However, @NicholasTKerry1 & @DamianMurray1’s finding pertained to the anxiety component of Big Five Neuroticism—whichtaps more generalized anxiety than fear of physical threats

An alt personality model, the HEXACO, has a dimension that contains a dedicated fearfulness facet

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As such, our study employed data from 1,399 young adults for which we had both measures of HEXACO fearfulness & physical strength.

Across 5 samples, the sex diff in fearfulness was significantly mediated by strength—explaining 55% of the between-sex variance

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The full text PDF for our paper is here: drive.google.com/file/d/1O-hURJ…

Overall, then, the extant evidence supports the hypothesis that levels of fearfulness are functionally coordinated w/ one’s vulnerability to physical & social threats—& that this accounts for a bunch of within & between-sex variation in fear.

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Although strength explains a chunk of the sex diff in fear, women remain > fearful even when accounting for the effect of strength

This is consistent w/ a new BBS article arguing that women evolved higher levels of self-protectiveness than men

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cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Final-final note: @ed_hagen & colleagues have found that physical strength also mediates the sex difference in depression (see Ed’s thread)

Depression, anxiety, & fear are comorbid. Questions remain re: common (or interpenetrating) effects of strength on these symptoms
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https://twitter.com/ed_hagen/status/1496488028956725251