Table 3.

Sex differences in behavioral traits in humans.

Trait	Sex Bias	Evidence for the role of hormones	Evidence for the role of genetic factors	Other factors affecting sex differences in behavior
Cognition	Men do better at spatial tasks [94] and mathematical problem solving [95]. Women do better on verbal fluency, articulation, and verbal memory tests [12].	Prenatal hormone effects shown from studies of CAH, Turner's and androgen insensitivity syndromes [96]	No reliable evidence for the effect of sex chromosome genes proven from studies of Turner's and XX males [97]	Greater brain asymmetry in men for both verbal and non-verbal tasks [98; 99]
Play behavior-movement	There are sex differences in choice of toys, gender of the play partner, social play [100] and movement [101; 102; 103]	Testosterone influences juvenile play [104] Prenatal androgen levels affect play behavior and movement [105; 106]	Genetics sex seems to affect play behavior more than prenatal hormone exposure [104]	Parents and other socializing agents (i.e. peers, community, and child's own cognitive processes) [107] Developmental experience [108], visual information [109] affect movement organization
Language	Women perform better on episodic memory [110] and verbal fluency tasks, men are better at visuospatial processing [111; 112; 113] Greater dependence of females on declarative memory and males on procedural memory [114; 115]	Estrogen influences word and declarative memory abilities in women [116; 117; 118; 119; 120; 121; 122; 123; 124] Testosterone influences word memory in men [125] Prenatal testosterone levels relate to language processing in girls [126]	Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the gene, brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) affecting BDNF secretion rates, partly accounting for greater dependence of females on declarative memory and the sex differences observed in language-related tasks [127]	Greater degrees of left hemispheric lateralization of brain for language in males and the bilateral language processing in females [128] Faster development of hippocampal brain regions in girls, activation of certain brain regions such as hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus [129; 130]
Aggression	Foul language, imitation of aggressive models, violence and physical aggression more common in males [131]	Estradiol and progesterone influencing the serotonergic system [132; 133] Weak association between testosterone and aggression in both sexes [134; 135] High testosterone levels leading to increased verbal aggression and impulsivity in women [136; 137]	Association between serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms and greater impulsivity in males but not females [138] Polymorphisms in monoamine oxidase-A (MAOA) gene associated with antisocial personality disorder and aggression in males [139]	Low self-control, high impulsivity and negative emotionality [140] Sex-specific disparities in the neural circuitry of impulse control and emotion regulation, as well as serotonergic systems [141] Larger orbitofrontal cortexes in women [142]