Early training for women in marketing?

If women are meaner than men—and I’m not daring to say they are!—maybe it’s because they start practicing earlier in life. Researchers at Brigham Young University found that “relational aggression”—defined as “harming others through purposeful manipulation and damage to relationships”—is a factor in the pecking order even among pre-schoolers. “Exclusionary behavior and threatening to withdraw friendship are two prime examples of relational aggression,” according to a BYU summary of the study, which examined how pre-schoolers regard their peers. “Research indicates that this behavior is the preferred type of aggression among girls.” Quoting one of the BYU professors involved in the research, another part of this summary makes it sound as though mean pre-school girls will be well-suited to ad-agency life when they grow up: “They are good resource controllers, socially skilled, popular, conscientious and socially integrated, and yet are among the most aggressive, dominant and arrogant children in the peer group. It is this bi-strategic mix of positive and negative behavior that allows them to maintain their standing in the social hierarchy.” In an Associated Press dispatch about the study, another of the researchers notes that such behavior is found in about one-fifth of girls. “It also shows up in boys, but much less frequently.”

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

May 11, 2005 | Permalink