If you never change your mind, why have one?

1. Men have 4% more brain cells than women, and about 100 grams more of brain tissue. Men might think this is to their advantage, but many women have asked, why do men need more brain tissue in order to get the same things done?
2. Even though men have more brain cells, it is reported that women have more dendritic connections between brain cells.
3. A woman’s brain has a larger corpus collusum, meaning that women can transfer data between the left & right hemisphere faster than men. Men tend to be more left brained - while women have greater access to both sides.
4. For men, language is most often just in the dominant hemisphere (usually the left side), but a larger number of women seem to be able to use both sides for language. This gives them a distinct advantage. If a woman has a stroke in the left front side of the brain, she may still retain some language from the right front side. Men who have the same left sided damage are less likely to recover as fully. 
   
5. bonding/nesting instincts - current research has demonstrated that females, on average, have a larger deep limbic system than males. This gives females several advantages and disadvantages. Due to the larger deep limbic brain women are more in touch with their feelings, they are generally better able to express their feelings than men. They have an increased ability to bond and be connected to others (which is why women are the primary caretakers for children - there is no society on earth where men are primary caretakers for children). Females have a more acute sense of smell, which is likely to have developed from an evolutionary need for the mother to recognize her young. Having a larger deep limbic system leaves a female somewhat more susceptible to depression, especially at times of significant hormonal changes such as the onset of puberty, before menses, after the birth of a child and at menopause. Women attempt suicide three times more than men. Yet, men kill themselves three times more than women, in part, because they use more violent means of killing themselves (women tend to use overdoses with pills while men tend to either shoot or hang themselves) and men are generally less connected to others than are women. Disconnection from others increases the risk of completed suicides.

my parents’ friends came over for dinner or something 

I never come downstairs when my parents’ friends are over because everyone just stares at me and speaks in quiet, rapid Spanish.

But they’ve been here for about 3 hours now, being loud & obnoxious and I no longer give a fuck. I AM HUNGRY, DEHYDRATED, AND I HAVE A MIGRAINE. I AM GOING DOWN THERE AND TAKING ALL THE FOOD I PLEASE BECAUSE THIS IS MY HOUSE, I AM NOT HARRY POTTER I CANNOT BE KEPT HIDDEN UNDER THE STAIRS GODDAMMIT 

Over the past few decades, scholars have noticed a striking difference in the patterns of aggression between teenage males & females. While boys and young male adults are prone to engage in direct aggression (physical violence such as hitting, punching, kicking), their female counterparts are more prone to (more painful?) social aggression, or in other words - bitchery. 

Now, let’s get this out of the way first. Boys are just as capable of being megabitches as girls. However, research has found that girls are more likely to fall into the catty category than boys. 

Washington State University anthropologists Nicole Hess & Edward Hagen conducted an experiment in which they gathered 255 college kids - males & females ranging from eighteen to twenty-four years of age - and asked them to read over the following social scenario:

Let’s say that you’re at a campus party and out of the corner of your eye you notice one of your classmates (another male student for male participants and another female student for female participants) conversing with the teaching assistant for the class you share with this other student. The other student, who is unusually short, is overheard saying some rather nasty lies about you—in particular, he or she is telling the teaching assistant that you haven’t been working on a joint project for the class. Instead, this person says, you’ve been slacking off, coming to class with a hangover and partying in Baja. Your TA glances over at you, with your beer in hand, and then glances away quickly as if disgusted. Then your duplicitous classmate walks over to you and says, innocently, “Hey! How are things going? Hasn’t the weather been great lately?” 

Once the participants finished reading, they completed a questionnaire about how they’d like to respond. They were given options such as “I feel like punching this person right now.”  ”I feel like telling people at the party that this person is clueless and says stupid things during class”  ”I feel like saying, ‘Yeah, the weather has been nice’” then they were given scales from 1 to 10 to indicate how much they agreed with these statements.

What this experiment found was a clear difference between aggressive tendencies in men & women. The girls felt compelled to defend themselves by attacking the offender’s reputation. In spite of the fact that they realized malicious gossip wasn’t right, this was their preferred point of attack.

Full Article: (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bitch-evolved-girls-cruel)

There are countless ways to make yourself unhappy. Here’s one more, according to research out of Stanford: Assume you’re alone in your unhappiness.

The January issue of Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin  talks about a series of studies examining the way college students evaluate moods - both their own and of those around them. Researchers found that their subjects (the college students) consistently underestimated how dejected others were - and likely wound up feeling more dejected themselves. The study was led by Alex Jordan, a Ph.D Student in Stanford’s psychology department. He got the idea for this research after observing his friends’ reactions to Facebook. Jordan noticed that they’d usually feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging into the site and scrolling through others’ attractive photos, accomplished bios, & happy status updates. 

‘They were convinced that everyone else was leading the perfect life.’ Jordan said.

The human habit of overestimating others’ happiness is nothing new, of course. But social networking may be making this tendency worse. If Jordan’s conclusions are correct, it follows that the site would have a special effect in making us sadder & lonelier. By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of peoples’ lives and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook touches a raw nerve in the human mind. 

Full Article: (http://www.slate.com/id/2282620)