Article 34MM4 It’s official – women are nicer than men. Is this really science? | Anne Perkins

It’s official – women are nicer than men. Is this really science? | Anne Perkins

by
Anne Perkins
from Economics | The Guardian on (#34MM4)
A new study by neuroeconomists suggesting that women's biology could make them a soft touch covers overly familiar gendered ground

Richard Thaler has just won the Nobel prize for economics for his work explaining how human choice can be influenced. The insight that people make decisions for all sorts of reasons, not all of them based on a cool assessment of the consequences, led Professor Thaler to global acclaim as the slayer of homo economicus. Homo economicus was an entirely fictional character who decided whose turn it was to put the bin out on rational grounds. Thaler was, among his lesser achievements, David Cameron's favourite economist, his nudge theory credited with encouraging people to stop smoking and eat more healthily.

What Professor Thaler, in his moment of glory, may not yet realise is that his insights may already be on their way to extinction, just like homo economicus. He is being nudged out of the future by biology: to be precise, by neuroeconomics, which like his is an interdisciplinary science but one that studies brain activity, or the lack of it, to draw conclusions about why people behave as they do.

Related: Stereotype that women are kinder and less selfish is true, claim neuroscientists

Related: Why don't women win Nobel science prizes? | Hannah Devlin

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