{
  "id": 12149375,
  "title": "Two decades of U.S. data challenge an evolutionary explanation for the gender-equality paradox",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/05/two-decades-of-u-s-data-challenge-an-evolutionary-explanation-for-the",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-05T12:00:33.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PsyPost",
    "slug": "psypost",
    "url": "https://www.psypost.org/two-decades-of-u-s-data-challenge-an-evolutionary-explanation-for-the-gender-equality-paradox/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Two recent studies analyzing U.S. data spanning two decades have challenged the widely held evolutionary explanation for the gender-equality paradox. This paradox refers to the observation that differences in personality, academic performance, and mental health between men and women tend to appear larger in countries with higher levels of gender equality and economic prosperity. According to evolutionary psychologists, this phenomenon can be attributed to the resource hypothesis, which posits that innate sex-specific tendencies emerged during early human evolution when men and women faced different pressures. In such societies, the availability of resources and relaxation of strict social norms would allow individuals to express their true, biologically driven gender differences.\n\nHowever, the findings from two longitudinal studies conducted by Gabriele Prati, an associate professor at the University of Bologna, offer evidence against this hypothesis. The studies, published in Social Psychology and Psychological Reports, tracked a nationally representative sample of Americans over a period of nearly two decades, examining how psychological differences between men and women evolved as the country grew wealthier and more gender-equal.\n\nIn the first study, published in Social Psychology, Prati analyzed data from the Midlife in the United States project, which included 7,108 adults surveyed between the mid-1990s and 2014. During this period, the United States experienced documented increases in GDP and overall gender equality. The participants completed surveys assessing their personality traits, including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and neuroticism, as well as measures of altruism, trust, negative emotions, and clinical depression.\n\nAt the start of the study, women scored higher than men on most personality traits, including negative emotions, agreeableness, and neuroticism, while men scored slightly higher on openness. However, the research found that the psychological gaps between men and women remained unchanged over the nearly twenty-year period. For instance, the gender gap in altruism, trust, negative emotions, and major personality traits remained consistent. Moreover, the gender gap in depression actually shrank, as women's odds of depression fell by about 38 percent while men's remained unchanged.\n\nIn a second study published in Psychological Reports, Prati examined the same sample of Americans from adolescence into adulthood, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The research followed the participants over five survey waves, from middle and high school students to adults in their late twenties.\n\nThese studies provide strong evidence against the resource hypothesis, which predicts that increased prosperity and gender equality should lead to growing psychological differences between men and women. Instead, the findings suggest that greater prosperity and gender equality do not make men and women progressively more psychologically different. Instead, the results indicate that societal changes in wealth and gender equality may have the opposite effect, potentially leading to slightly lower conscientiousness among women and a higher likelihood of depression among men.\n\nPrati emphasized that a pattern observed when comparing countries is not necessarily evidence of the mechanism producing that pattern. He highlighted that following people and societies over time offers a more direct test of the hypothesis, which, in this case, did not support the resource hypothesis in its current form.",
  "summary": "Evolutionary psychologists have often argued that richer, more egalitarian societies amplify innate differences between men and women. However, two decades-long studies of Americans suggest otherwise, finding that rising wealth and gender equality do not widen the psychological divide.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}