ISSUES, PROBLEMS, AND PITFALLS IN ASSESSING SEX DIFFERENCES: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX DIFFERENCES

To survey, evaluate, and distill the empirical evidence regarding psychological sex differences at a time of intense, polarized debate on the issues of equality of the sexes and changing sex roles is an awesome responsibility. Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jackiin were not intimidated by this consequential challenge. Their book, The Psy chology of Sex Differences, already has become a frequently cited reference work because of the reputation of the authors, the con temporary interest in the topic of sex differences, the scope of the book's coverage, and the extensive bibliography provided. The au thors' conclusions about sex differences have received wide circula tion in both scientific journals and the lay press and have been ac cepted by many as an authoritative assessment of the nature and extent of psychological sex differences. Further, the Maccoby and Jackiin evaluation of the empirical literature may be expected to have important implications for psychological theorizing, for the direction of future research, and for the course of future social policy. Because of its potential influence, therefore, the work requires close scrutiny and careful evaluation as to its conceptual, empirical, and inferential adequacy. The positive contributions of the book have been discussed elsewhere (e.g., Emmerich, 1975); to avoid redundancy, I have de fined my own task here as one of providing a critical appraisal of the evidential support for the authors' conclusions about sex differences. The book, a sequel to Maccoby's The Development of Sex Differ ences published in 1966, assays the results of approximately 1600 studies published, for the most part, between 1966 and 1973. The authors surveyed the psychological journals that most frequently in clude findings about psychological sex differences and abstracted those studies analyzing between-sex differences for inclusion in their 233-page Annotated Bibliography. Additionally, other sources were