The Effects of Culture on Women's Cognitive Development

When rodents, pigs and macaques are dominated and defeated, they exhibit hormonal and behavioural changes. Scientists call this social defeat. A new paper in PNAS examines if culture affects our brains. In relatively gender equal countries, there is no sex difference in cortical thickness. But, in patriarchal countries, there are systematic differences in protocol thickness in the right hemisphere. This holds controlling for GDP per capita. Their hypothesis: Social defeat suppresses women's cognitive development. That is their harassment, bullying, degradation.