Although men and women often differ in political attitudes and behavior, there is no widely accepted scientific explanation of such phenomena. After surveying evidence concerning gender differences in the fields of social psychology, ethology, neurology, cultural anthropology, and political science, five hypotheses concerning the way males and females respond to social cues are derived from the neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection. The predicted differences in the mode of political cognition are then shown to be consistent with findings from experimental studies of emotional and cognitive reactions to televised facial displays of political leaders.

One of the gender differences reported here, women's commitment to particular political figures and men's sensitivity to competitive situations, has my particular interest inasmuch as it appears to match behavioral sex differences in chimpanzees. While the author is aware of this similarity, I intend to explore it further, in the meantime correcting point by point a misleading dichotomy underlying much of the author's discussion. Females are said to emphasize social bonding and positive emotions, seeking political solutions based on informal agreement, whereas males are considered to be more confrontational and dominance-oriented. Yet, aggressive and cohesive tendencies are not as antithetical as they appear, and less sex-linked than suggested. In fact, one could argue that human males owe their success in the political arena to their ability to combine both tendencies.

During recent years scientists coming from the ecologist and molecular biologist traditions have argued very differently about the risks of deliberate release of genetically engineered micro-organisms (GEOs) into the environment. When actual guidelines for regulation have been drawn up and “scientific experts” have been consulted, representatives of these different scientific camps have given quite different advice. In fact, we have a tacit battle between scientific experts as to who has the right to speak “for” science to the public and policy makers. It seems that the molecular biologists so far have had the upper hand because of concrete and spectacular achievements in this field. Meanwhile, these experts can profit from the fact that the general public and policy makers tend to see science as a unified enterprise and are typically unaware of systematic differences in conceptions about science between experts from different scientific traditions. Thus, a scientist from any scientific field may easily be seen as an expert on science in general.