The Handbook of Sex Differences is a four-volume reference work written to assess sex differences, with a primary focus on the human species. Based on the authors’ highly influential 2008 book Sex Differences, these volumes highlight important new research findings from the last decade and a half alongside earlier findings. In this, the work’s fourth and last volume, two related questions are addressed: Are there universal sex differences (i.e., sex differences found in all societies)? And if the answer is yes, what are they and how can each one be theoretically explained? To answer the first of these two questions, this volume condenses much of the research findings amassed in the book’s first three volumes into summary tables. Then, to help identify likely universal sex differences, three versions of social role theory and two versions of evolutionary theory are examined relative to each possible universal sex difference. Consideration is even given to religious scriptures as a sixth type of explanation. In the concluding analyses, 308 likely universal sex differences are identified. No single theory was able to explain all these differences. Nevertheless, the two evolutionary theories were better in this regard than any of the three social role theories, including the recently proposed biosocial version of social role theory. The Handbook of Sex Differences is of importance for any researcher, student, or professional who requires a comprehensive resource on sex differences.

The Handbook of Sex Differences is a four-volume reference work assembled and written to assess sex differences in human traits (although findings regarding other species are also included). Based on the authors’ highly influential 2008 book Sex Differences, these volumes highlight important new research findings from the last decade and a half alongside earlier findings. Conclusions reached by meta-analyses are also included. In this, the work’s third volume, findings from thousands of studies pertaining to behavior, broadly defined, are summarized. Traits covered include those involving personality, social behavior, criminality, work, and sex stereotypes. The eight chapters comprising Volume III are as follows: 16. Personality and Behavioral Tendencies 17. Social Behavior 18. Acquiring, Selling, and Consuming Behavior 19. Criminality, Near-Criminality, and Victimization 20. Education, Work, Social Status, and Territorial Behavior 21. Sex Stereotypes 22. Attitudes and Actions Toward Others According to their Sex 23. Ecologically Based Sex Differences The Handbook of Sex Differences is of significant importance for any researcher, student, or professional who requires a comprehensive resource on sex differences.

The Handbook of Sex Differences is a four-volume reference work assembled and written to assess sex differences in human traits (although findings regarding other species are also included). Based on the authors’ highly influential 2008 book Sex Differences, these volumes highlight important new research findings from the last decade and a half alongside earlier findings. Conclusions reached by meta-analyses are also included. This, the work’s second volume, summarizes results from thousands of studies pertaining to cognition, broadly defined. Variables related to perceptual and motor skills, emotions, intellectual abilities, and mental disorders are among those examined. Even sex differences in attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and interests are documented in this volume. The seven chapters comprising Volume II are as follows: 9. Perceptual Abilities and Motor Functioning 10. Emotional Factors 11. Cognitive, Academic, and Intellectual Factors 12. Learning, Memory, Knowledge, and Cognitive States 13. Self-Assessments and States Of Mind 14. Mental Health and Illness 15. Attitudes, Beliefs, Interests, and Preferences The Handbook of Sex Differences is of importance for any researcher, student, or professional who requires a comprehensive resource on sex differences.

The Handbook of Sex Differences is a four-volume reference work assembled and written to assess sex differences in human traits (although findings regarding other species are also included). Based on the authors’ highly influential 2008 book Sex Differences, these volumes highlight important new research findings from the last decade and a half alongside earlier findings. Conclusions reached by meta-analyses are also included. In this, the work’s first volume, findings from thousands of studies are summarized regarding basic biology. Results having to do with sex ratios at birth and traits involving a wide range of bodily features are reported along with numerous complex aspects of biochemistry, neurology, and physical health. The eight chapters comprising Volume I are as follows: 1. Reproduction, Development, and Morphology 2. Anatomical and Physiological Factors 3. Bodily Fluids, Biochemicals, and Biochemical Receptors 4. The Brain: Structure and Functioning 5. Physical Health and Illness 6. Responses to Physical and Chemical Environmental Factors 7. Responses to Stress and to Pain 8. Prenatal Factors The Handbook of Sex Differences is of significant importance for any researcher, student, or professional who requires a comprehensive resource on sex differences.

Spanning many different epochs and varieties of religious experience, this book develops a new approach to religion and its role in human history. The authors look across a range of religious phenomena-from ancestor worship to totemism, shamanism, and worldwide modern religions-to offer a new explanation of the evolutionary success of religious behaviors. Their book is more empirical and verifiable than most previous books on evolution and religion because they develop an approach that removes guesswork about beliefs in the supernatural, focusing instead on the behaviors of individuals. The result is a pioneering look at how and why natural selection has favored religious behaviors throughout history.

A fundamentally new approach to religion that differs from all other explanations by defining religion not in terms of unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, but by the identifiable behavior of communicating acceptance of supernatural claims. This approach distinguishes different forms of religious behavior, from the ancestor worship, totemism, and shamanism of traditional societies, to the behavior of prophets that started the world religions, by their different supernatural claims. Communicating acceptance of any supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships because it communicates a willingness to accept unskeptically the influence of the speaker in a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent. This is why the clearest identifiable effect of religious behavior is the promotion of cooperative family-like social relationships: parent/child-like relationships between the individuals making and accepting the supernatural claims and sibling-like relationships among coacceptors of those claims. As religious behaviors, and the increased cooperation they produce, are copied from one generation to the next, the number of cooperating codescendants has tended to increase. Thus, religion can be seen as a descendant-leaving strategy of our ancestors that has been favored by natural selection and has become a human universal found in all known cultures.