Today’s blog entry is a metaentry. I feel like the time is ripe to take

a look at why and if gender-specific research (and thus blogging about

gender specific research) is even necessary. Do the obvious biological

differences between men and women give rise to psychologies that are

different enough to merit independent study? In certain domains, such as

child-rearing, it strikes me as intuitive that biological differences

(breasts vs. no breasts, etc.) will manifest themselves in different

parental investment and thus different attitudes.



Let’s look at less biologically-dependent spheres of life. Do biological

differences lead to different attitudes in the workplace? In the

kitchen? In science departments? Where do human universals override

gender distinctions? Big topics. To start to tackle this question in

terms of happiness, I present a recently published book, “Bluebird:

Women and the New Psychology of Happiness.”



Written by Ariel Gore, this new work takes a look at existing research

and the noticeable gaps in the research around women’s happiness. She

provides anecdotes that point to the need for a more extensive

literature on women’s happiness in particular. Women, for instance, claim

that children are the most joyful part of their lives, but when asked to

recall the most joyous moments of their day, they rarely include encounters

with their children. This paradox, Gore believes, is one example of

where positive psychology research fails to explain the female psyche.



Given the nature of this blog, it’s clear that I believe that positive

psychology can be most effective if broken down by across gender

divisions. Both layman intuitions and empirical studies show that women

are made happy by different things in different ways than are men. I wonder

whether this assertion holds implications for other subgroups of the

population that have different biologies. Should we divide psychology

research along races, as well, since we know that there are biological

differences there? What aspects of our biological systems are

relevant to psychology and how should we adjust our research

methodology accordingly?