Males more often operate in a detached and isolated fashion. Solitary work to master a skill is a common characteristic of male li...fe, and men are more quick to dismiss the claims of other people and even of their own emotions. This approach tends to make things (machines, ideas) at least as important as people in the man's inner life. Words such as rational, independent, and objective describe positive aspects of this tendency; cold, detached, unfeeling are words for the more destructive aspects. In contrast, women's lives are more likely to embody the theme of connection--both connection between people and connection between the emotional and intellectual parts of oneself. Women have less of a penchant for deciding things independent of the relevant network of connections. In most instances people matter more to them than things and they will put a faithfulness to human ties above dedication to "principle" or pure "independence" of judgment. It is testament to the male bias of our society that such qualities are often referred to with the demeaning names of "dependence" or "conformity."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »