This is really a rather counter-intuitive result to me. In fact I find it really rather strange. Here’s the whole synopsis of the paper:

Previous research suggested that sex differences in personality traits are larger in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities equal with those of men. In this article, the authors report cross-cultural findings in which this unintuitive result was replicated across samples from 55 nations (N = 17,637). On responses to the Big Five Inventory, women reported higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than did men across most nations. These findings converge with previous studies in which different Big Five measures and more limited samples of nations were used. Overall, higher levels of human development–including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth–were the main nation-level predictors of larger sex differences in personality. Changes in men’s personality traits appeared to be the primary cause of sex difference variation across cultures. It is proposed that heightened levels of sexual dimorphism result from personality traits of men and women being less constrained and more able to naturally diverge in developed nations. In less fortunate social and economic conditions, innate personality differences between men and women may be attenuated.

What’s confusing me is that this is entirely running the other way from what happens with cultural and working differences between rich and poor societies. In a truly poor society (as most of the world still lives in) then sexual roles are strictly, even fiercely defined. There’s very little freedom for a woman to enter the world of paid work outside the home, for example, and there’s almost none for a man who might want to stay home and raise the children.

In our vastly richer society these options are indeed open. Even if they really only have opened up in the last generation or two and to the chagrin of some, not many men make the decision to do as they now can.

Now I would expect that in a world of greater freedom such as we have, that personality differences as defined by sex would reduce. For while I do believe that certain parts of the human psyche are innate, I’m perfectly willing to agree that some (much?) is influenced by the society in which one grows up. A more egalitarian one, as between the sexes, would to my mind lead to a narrowing of those differences.

But the authors of this paper have come to the opposite conclusion. That personality differences between the sexes increase when the society is both richer and more sexually egalitarian. Very much a head scratcher and one I’m going to have to think about a little more.

One point we might make though. If the empirical evidence is that the richer a society the greater female neuroticism, have we actually found the smoking gun about women’s body image, anorexia and the rest? That capitalism really is to blame, as it is capitalism that produces the riches?