Is Jordan Peterson Right About Agreeable Women? (No)

A Man and his Lobsters Hierarchies

Jordan Peterson’s defense of social hierarchy is not totally devoid of reason. However, is his suggestion that women need to become more assertive and less agreeable to ascend the hierarchy a fair appraisal?

This blog will not get into proving the theoretical evolutionary basis for gender roles, for that read Pinker’s The Blank Slate, or Triver’s Parental Investment and Sexual Selection.

So, first of all, why is there any differences in personality traits between women and men?

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

The personality traits extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience are the 5 main personality traits and they are all heritable. (1) Do men and women differ in their personality traits? An excellent paper titled The Gender Similarities Hypothesis by the Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde shows that on most traits, but not all, women and men are almost exactly the same. Which is no surprise, we are not comparing chimp behavior to human behavior, we should not expect huge discrepancies. However, if personality traits predict behavior, and we find personality trait differences between the genders, then we can say there are behavior differences in men and women, however small.

Professor Hyde’s objective in this paper is clear: to show minimal differences between men and women. So, this evidence is taken from someone who would bring the best evidence for the hypothesis that there are no gender differences— although she admits there are subtle differences. The data Hyde provides shows a higher incidence for men in the following fields: extramarital sex, cheating attitudes, intrusive interrupting in speech, aggressive speech, science, and spatial ability. Females showed a small effect for increased anxiety and language use. The moderate effect size for women was increased levels of indirect aggression, while for males it was increased likelihood of aggression, verbal assertiveness, and mental rotation of objects. The large effects where the behaviors diverged the most was in agreeableness, specifically tender mindedness, occurring more often in women. (2)

Most of the differences are small or nonexistent. However, this is not evidence that there will be no difference in career preference between men and women on average, or even that men and women are totally equivalent in capabilities. Hyde points out that nearly 80% of the differences in her paper examined are small or close to zero. But, not all of these variables are equivalent, and certain vocations need different traits, or a combination of them.

As stated by Hyde, there are two things to consider in wondering how much a small effect will matter. The first is that on some traits men’s bell curves are flatter than women’s, although their averages can be identical. This means more men on both extremes of some traits, the high end and low end — which means men could have the highest number of members who show the most of a behavior and the least of a behavior at the same time. The second is if a small effect increases male tendency for a certain trait, the entire bell curve gets shifted and then you have large representations of males at one end of the tail and very few at the other end. If acquiring a CEO position requires being disagreeable, and the small effect makes the the most agreeable people females, and the most disagreeable people males, then it seems males have the advantage in attaining that position. This is assuming that being disagreeable is a desirable trait for a CEO — it probably is.

The last consideration is that women are more attentive to their babies, and on surveys rate spending time with their children as being more important than men do. (3) The reason we say “spending time” is that time used in one field cannot be used elsewhere, and if women feel they should spend more time with their children that is time spent that males potentially have free to use elsewhere.

Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last?

First lets define what having the psychological trait agreeableness means in terms of behavior. “Agreeable individuals place greater value on their interpersonal relationships, are more motivated to maintain these relationships, are more prosocial, are more cooperative and helpful.” (4)

So from the start agreeable people on average rate interpersonal relationships as being more important and are more cooperative. This goes a long way for the theory that women prefer different jobs than men. If a job consists of firing people, which ends interpersonal relationships, then agreeable people would probably not tend to like those positions.

Personality traits are highly predictive of behavior and political affiliation, and they are largely stable over time in people. So, should we give all women assertiveness training like Jordan B. Peterson suggests? Probably not because women who are just as disagreeable as men still don’t earn as much as their male counter parts (4)— the study suggests a reason: because they value community and other job aspects like job security and healthcare over money. Agreeable men also suffer economic loss for not being disagreeable. In the group studied, -1 standard deviation on the trait agreeableness conveyed males ~$11,000 more in income, while females only accrued ~$2,000.

If it is the case that women are punished for not fitting into their stereotype, this is where society must change for the sake of the individual. It should be seen as a form of social oppression to be not be rewarded or punished based upon behavior, but in reference to the group in which you belong, such as gender. This is how social justice arguments should be framed: hold everything constant and show that because explicitly due to group identity there is a discrepancy. Citizens owe one another freedom from being punished for not falling into roles they do not fit into. Does this study show that behavior is the only thing influencing the pay discrepancy? No.

Three large problems need addressed. One is that the study was unable to control for career choice between genders, which men tend to choose more prestigious, higher paying jobs. Who would have thought being disagreeable is a trait suited for lawyers and not childcare teachers? So it seems Peterson’s advice won’t help women because their vocations are less profitable and they are unable to argue their case for more money when more money is not even a option in their field.

Second is the higher statistical likelihood of males relocating for job opportunity and forcing their female spouse to follow and acquire a new, unplanned job.

Lastly, the study brings up that it is not fully apparent that being disagreeable on a questionnaire translates to being assertive in real life due to the stigma that women are supposed to be agreeable — women could be agreeable on the questionnaire, but in the workplace feel pressure to fit into the “agreeable woman” stereotype and thus change their behavior.

Agreeableness and Job Choice

So agreeable males and disagreeable females are economically punished, whether or not this is due to the possibility that being agreeable makes you more likely to enter into jobs where you can “get along” rather than “get ahead”, or if they are being directly punished for not conforming to gender stereotypes. There seems to be empirical backing to suggest level of agreeableness influences vocational choice;(5) both disagreeable people and agreeable people seem to seek environments where their traits are most useful.

Disagreeable people are much better at bargaining for their own good, as well, which likely accounts for a large portion of the pay gap between the poles of the agreeableness spectrum— they are probably demanding raises more.(6) But are they better at work? One study found that higher levels of agreeableness and contentiousness correlated with higher job performance reviews in jobs that fostered cooperation. (7) Although one wonders if disagreeable people are being punished not for being less proficient, but less communal? The pay gap for agreeable and disagreeable people seems to echo the gender gap: most can be explained by job choice.

American corporations incentivize top down agreement, and this seems to only exacerbate the differences between agreeable and disagreeable employee wages. Agreeable people will never disagree in an environment that encourages agreement, and disagreeable people will only occasionally disagree. If job discourse was more inclusive of dissent, then perhaps disagreeable people would not dominate the dissenting opinion, and agreeable people would feel more obliged to speak out.

Males dominate the benefit from being more disagreeable, but is not clear that being disagreeable is related to an objective level of accomplishment at work. Certainly it is a valuable trait in standalone ventures. But most jobs are cooperative and if there were no cooperators to disagree with, where would the disagreeable people be? Disagreeable tendencies are only valuable in contrast to the agreeable ones, and it is likely we are rewarding people for uncooperative behavior because that behavior advances its own interests better than others.

Conclusion

So, in summary, be more disagreeable only if you are in an environment that promotes and rewards that behavior. It seems unlikely that disagreeable people are more productive, if at all, and the benefits of agreeableness are likely understated because the behavior is spread over a group and is decentralized and unattributable to single authors, by default. It seems likely that disagreeable people are getting paid more because they advocate for raises more, are discernible from the group due to their higher likelihood to dissent, and likely seek jobs that are competitive and higher-paying as a result. Any theory of equality would seek to disentangle job performance from these factors and reward citizens with higher pay only in regards to performance and job choice, rather than personality traits that results in differing behaviors. Doesn’t equality demand we all just “be ourselves” and find work that fits our natural attitudes and rewards us by some objective sense of accomplishment rather than being good at arguing for wages?

1. T. Bouchard and M. McGue, “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences,” J Neurobiol 54 (2003)
2. Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581–592. doi:10.1037/0003–066x.60.6.581
3. Browne, K. 1998. Divided labors: An evolutionary view of women at work. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson; Hrdy, S. B. 1999. Mother nature: A history of mothers, infants, and natural selection. New York: Pantheon Books.
4. Judge, T. A., Livingston, B. A., & Hurst, C. (2012). Do nice guys — and gals — really finish last? The joint effects of sex and agreeableness on income. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(2), 390–407. doi:10.1037/a0026021
5. Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using theory to evaluate personality and job-performance relations: A socioanalytic perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 100–112. doi:10.1037/0021–9010.88.1.100
6. Barry, B., & Friedman, R. (1998). Bargainer characteristics in distributive and integrative negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 345–359. doi:10.1037/0022–3514.74.2.345
7. Witt, L. A., Burke, L. A., Barrick, M. A., & Mount, M. K. (2002). The interactive effects of conscientiousness and agreeableness on job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), 164–169. doi:10.1037//0021–9010.87.1.164