Viva La Difference post of the day

LATimes: once people are rich enough not to worry about starving to death, men and women are different in their wants and needs and personalities.

The findings, published Thursday in Science, suggest that on the contrary, gender differences across six key personality traits — altruism, trust, risk, patience, and positive and negative reciprocity — increase in richer and more gender-equal societies. Meanwhile, in societies that are poorer and less egalitarian, these gender differences shrink.

“Fulfilling basic needs is gender neutral,” said Johannes Hermle, a graduate student in economics at UC Berkeley who worked on the study. However, once those basic needs like food, shelter and good health are met and people are free to follow their own ambitions, the differences between men and women become more pronounced, he said.

The new work is based on data collected by the Gallup World Poll in 2012.

of course, there is a huge overlap in individuals but nevertheless there is a difference.