Evolutionary insights into the origins of sexism

Evolutionary concepts, including sexual selection, sexual conflict, and reproductive suppression, lend themselves to an analysis of the individual, economic and cultural origins of sexist behaviour. My thesis includes a number of hypothesis tests of evolutionary ideas relevant to the origins and preservation of sexist behaviour. I first investigate how people form opinions of others based on their appearance and the company they keep by probing a phenomenon known as ‘mate choice copying’ (MCC); where the attractiveness of individuals increases when they are viewed in the presence of an opposite-sex other. After reviewing and conducting a meta-analysis to test overall support for MCC, I performed several experiments that explore MCC and incorporate other factors that influence mate choice (i.e. group size and attire) and other measures that encompass mate choice (i.e. economic status). I found evidence of MCC in both men and women and uncovered consistent sex differences in rated economic status, as women were rated lower in earnings than the men they were presented with. Interestingly, these effects were neutralised in scenarios where hierarchy was not so obvious. In the second part of this thesis, I employ novel techniques such as the use of video games and pseudo-dating websites to test responses to intersexual competition and sex bias ratios. Overall, men exhibited more dominant and sexist behaviours when their mating opportunities or status were threatened by losing a videogame to a female opponent, or when exposed to a shortage of females in the local mating market. Women endorsed benevolent sexism (protection and adoration of women), when in vulnerable scenarios such as losing to men in competition or when engaging in female-female competition. I also uncovered links between sociosexual orientation and the sexual double standard, where sexually experienced individuals hold the opposite sex to a different sexual standard. I integrate research regarding the evolution of resource acquisition with the results of my thesis to demonstrate how women are consistently relegated within a hierarchy whenever men are present, and the role this plays in sexism. I also discuss various reasons men and women express sexist attitudes and draw possible links with reproductive pay-offs

CAREER DEVELOPMENT LEARNING – DOES GENDER IMPACT RESULTS?

Career development learning (CDL) can help students understand their future workplace, including; employment options, how to prepare for finding a job and the keys features of relevant industries. CDL can mean students get to a job that suits them faster, and more often, and it can result in students feeling more satisfied with their careers. CDL also helps prepare students for other experiences like Internships or Industry project units. Using a self-perceived employability questionnaire (Rothwell & Arnold, 2007) we assessed how students perceived internal and external aspects of their employability before and after a 12 weeks class (N = 296). One dimension of significance was the change in confidence in their own skills. While initial analyses did not reveal any changes in confidence over the course of the subject, ad hoc analyses revealed that this was because male and female students had significantly different responses. Confidence is a particularly important factor in employability (Jackson et al., 2019). I will discuss the way in which students experience the confidence in skills aspects of this CDL class differently based on gender. I will focus on the quantitative responses and add depth to the finding by also discussing the qualitative results. REFERENCES Jackson, D., Fleming, J., & Rowe, A. (2019). Enabling the Transfer of Skills and Knowledge across Classroom and Work Contexts. Vocations and Learning, 12(3), 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-019-09224-13 Rothwell, A., & Arnold, J. (2007). Self-perceived employability: Development and validation of a scale. Personnel Review, 36(1), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.1108/0048348071071670

INSIGHTS FROM A CAREER DEVELOPMENT LEARNING INTERVENTION: THE IMPACT OF STUDENT MAJOR ON PERCEPTIONS OF EMPLOYABILITY

Graduate employability has been an important and ongoing issue for universities, with concerns increasing as Australia faces recession. This prompted us to investigate the impacts of a semester-long Career Development Learning (CDL) intervention designed for STEM students and delivered at Monash University. Utilising a mixed-method approach, we measured students’ (n = 293) ‘Self Perceived Employability’ (SPE) and followed up with open-ended questions related to valued skills and future concerns. Collectively this allowed us to understand student career awareness and perceptions of future success. We found that students’ perception of the value of their degree and the demand of their skills varied with their field of study. For instance, students majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics perceived their skills to be low in demand within the labour force and were highly concerned with ‘unemployment or under employment’. In contrast, students majoring in Medicine perceived their skills to be highly desirable, with ‘admission to further study’ being of most concern. CDL interventions are an important tool to help guide students through to employability. Our results highlight the need to tailor CDL interventions to specific fields to address the various concerns of students and to facilitate their future success

An Evidence-Based Approach to Employability Curricula and Transferable Skill Development: A Mixed Methods Study

Within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), there is cross cultural evidence of gaps in transferrable skills between new graduates’ capabilities and employers’ expectations. These gaps hinder graduates’ ability to obtain employment. Herein we report the impact of an evidence-based approach to closing skills gaps in senior STEM students based on their self-perceived employability. A capstone-style, for-credit elective module was developed for STEM students based on the skills gaps found in prior research. The impact of this intervention was measured utilising a mixed-method design. Students’ self-perceived employability pre- and post- module completion were measured, along with post-module reflections collected via a series of open-ended questions. Overall, the module had a positive impact on student self-perceived employability, with the greatest impact in the areas of ‘awareness of opportunity’, ‘perceptions of future success’, and ‘confidence in skills’. A post hoc analysis indicated significant increases in post-module completion ‘confidence in skills’ for women, an important insight given the gender-based issues in career progress and retention in STEM. The qualitative analysis suggested that students highly valued the opportunity to develop job application and transferable skills. The results are discussed in the light of the importance of evidence-based, curriculum-embedded interventions in guiding students to employment

Sexual conflict and gender gap effects: associations between social context and sex on rated attractiveness and economic status

Human mate choice research often concerns sex differences in the importance of traits such as physical attractiveness and social status. A growing number of studies indicate that cues to social context, including other people who appear in stimulus photographs, can alter that individual’s attractiveness. Fewer studies, however, consider judgements of traits other than physical attractiveness, such as wealth. Here we manipulate the presence/absence of other people in photographs of target models, and test the effects on judgments of both attractiveness and earnings (a proxy for status). Participants (N = 2044) rated either male or female models for either physical attractiveness or social/economic status when presented alone, with same sex others or with opposite sex others. We collectively refer to this manipulation as ‘social context’. Male and female models received similar responses for physical attractiveness, but social context affected ratings of status differently for women and men. Males presented alongside other men received the highest status ratings while females presented alone were given the highest status ratings. Further, the status of females presented alongside a male was constrained by the rated status of that male. Our results suggests that high status may not directly lead to high attractiveness in men, but that status is more readily attributed to men than to women. This divide in status between the sexes is very clear when men and women are presented together, possibly reflecting one underlying mechanism of the modern day gender gap and sexist attitudes to women’s economic participation. This adds complexity to our understanding of the relationship between attractiveness, status, and sex in the light of parental investment theory, sexual conflict and economic theory

The interplay between economic status and attractiveness, and the importance of attire in mate choice judgments

Desirable characteristics of "opposite sex others," such as physical attractiveness and economic status, can influence how individuals are judged, and this is different for men and women. However, under various social contexts where cues of higher or lower economic status is suggested, sex differences in judgments related to mate choice have not been fully explored. In two studies, ratings of economic status and attractiveness were quantified for male and female targets that were presented under various social contexts. Study 1 assessed judgments (n = 1,359) of images of nine male and nine female targets in different sized groups containing only opposite-sex others (i.e., group size). While we found no significant effects of group size on male and female attractiveness, target female economic status increased when surrounded by two or more men. An ad hoc analysis controlling for the attire of the targets (business or casual) found that the association between target female economic status and group size occurred when females were in business attire. Study 2 investigates this effect further by presenting images of 12 males and 12 females, in higher and lower status attire (i.e., business and casual clothing) and measured judgments of attractiveness and economic status among women and men (n = 1,038). Consistent with the results of Study 1, female economic status was only affected when women were in business attire. However, female economic status decreased when in the presence of other men in business attire. There were no sex differences in judgments of economic status when judging stimuli in casual attire. Additionally, negative associations between attractiveness and economic status were found for males presented in casual attire. We discuss these results in the light of evolutionary sexual conflict theory by demonstrating how the asymmetrical importance of status between men and women can influence mate choice judgments

Mate choice copying in humans: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: Mate choice copying (MCC) is a type of non-independent mate choice where the ‘probability of acceptance’ of a potential mate increases if they are observed to be chosen by others first. The phenomenon was first demonstrated in several non-human taxa, with studies on humans conducted shortly after. The effect has been consistently documented among women choosing men (female choice), with mixed results among men choosing women (male choice). To understand and test the overall level of support for MCC in humans, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis, including a sensitivity analysis for publication bias. Methods: We found that the two most commonly used methods of studying MCC in humans involved either the ‘addition’ of a cue (opposite sex other) or the ‘augmentation’ of cues (manipulating ‘mate quality’ of opposite sex other). We performed separate meta-analyses for these two approaches, splitting each into male choice and female choice. Results: Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice. These sex differences disappeared in studies that ‘augment’ cues, as both sexes rated targets as more attractive when in the presence of more desirable others. We also detected high levels of heterogeneity in effect sizes and a moderate publication bias in favor of positive reports of MCC. Conclusions: Our results provide clarification for documented sex differences (or lack thereof) in human MCC. We also discuss the importance of method consistency in studies that transfer ideas from non-human to human behavioral studies, highlighting replication issues in the light of the publication crisis in psychological science

Effects of social contexts, sex and age on model male and female attractiveness.

<p>Data are mean attractiveness ratings (±1 SEM) for male (A) and female (C) targets split by sex of participant for 3 social contexts and attractiveness for male (B) and female (D) targets split by age and sex of participants. Lines within panels B and D indicate the effect of target age (in years) on rated attractiveness. *p <0.01, ** p <0.001 determined by post-hoc least significance difference tests.</p

The influence of male social status on female social status.

<p>This figure shows the correlation (r = .564, n = 15, p = .028) between the shift in female rated social status when presented alone compared to when females were presented alongside a male (y-axis) plotted against male social status ratings when presented alone (x-axis). Female social status ratings were negatively impacted by the males they were presented alongside. The dotted line drawn at <i>y</i> = 0 indicates no shift in social status ratings.</p

DNA extraction from fresh frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded human brain tissue

Both fresh frozen brain tissue and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) human brain tissue are invaluable resources for molecular genetic studies of diseases of the human nervous system, especially neurodegenerative disorders. To identify the optimal method for DNA extraction from human brain tissue, we compared several DNA extraction methods on differently processed tissue. Fragments of LRRK2 gene were amplified for evaluation. Results: DNA was successfully extracted in 100% of the fresh frozen tissue samples using either a commercial kit (QIAamp DNA Micro) or a laboratory-based method (boiling the samples in 0.1M NaOH, followed by proteinase K digestion, and then DNA extraction using Chelex-100). However, larger quantities of genomic DNA were extracted using the laboratory-based method in comparison to the commercial kit. In the case of FFPE tissue samples, the success rate for DNA extraction was greater when using the commercial kit compared to the laboratory-based method (DNA extracted from 76% versus 33% of tissue samples). Conclusion: although the present results demonstrate that PCR-amplifiable genomic DNA can be extracted from both fresh frozen and FFPE human brain tissue samples, obtaining fresh brain tissue is recommended for DNA extraction in future neuropathological studies, and for a maximal yield of geneomic DNA laboratory-based methods are recommended