I wonder what's driving this phenomena.
While these traits can be advantageous in some situations, modern education often requires sitting still and focusing for hours.
Is that a modern phenomenon? At what point in history didn't college level and higher education require sitting still and focusing?
Sure, modern education can be seen somewhat as a proxy for modern jobs. But it also is used as gatekeeping for jobs that have no business requiring prior education and which did not just a few decades prior.
Even when jobs don't "technically" require a degree these days - those holding them raises the bar on everyone else. If you can hire all college educated baristas for your coffee shop, you likely don't get down to the 18 year old kid who just wants to work hard on something meaningful and directly in front of him - even if they would make better employees in the end. No reason to take any chances if you can get pre-vetted mediocracy.
I'd argue the gates are being raised now in tech as well - many entry level positions in IT that you once could talk your way into and learn on the job are now credentialed.
Interesting times.
Which is been rather strongly been debunked in the last 20-30 years of modern research. Testosterone does not cause aggression, nor does it causes poor concentration. One of the few surviving theories on what testosterone actually do is that it amplify cultural defined behavior associated with social status and sex, primarily during encounters where status might be lost.
Abnormal levels of either low or high testosterone is associated with irritability, mood swings, poor concentration, and even delusions. Those findings are quite similar to studies on estrogen and progestogen.
I know this is just one example, but I remember the pretty fascinating study linked below quite well, where mens' testosterone levels were the determining factor in seeing how they reacted to their dogs' loss in an agility competition: men with high levels of testosterone punished their dogs by yelling and hitting them, men with lower levels of testosterone supported, petted and praised their animals. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to see how the "high testosterone response" would have been a status benefit to the man in question in the not-too-distant past, but now is much more likely to be a liability.
https://news.utexas.edu/2006/09/19/research-reveals-connecti...
The first is a meta study done on testosterone by Robert Sapolsky. An other (which is referenced in that one) is a theory called the challenge hypothesis as it applies to humans, which makes predictions that testosterone rise along social status (as it apply to sexual reproduction), and it boost protective behavior in the case that status is challenged.
One famous experiment was a version of the game theory experiment called the ultimatum game. If the experiment is carefully constructed in a way where social status is maintained by cooperation, and status is lost by aggression that rewards personal gain, people injected with testosterone behave more cooperative and less aggressive. A noticeable finding was that if participants was told they got injected by testosterone, but it was in reality a placebo, the participant then acted more aggressively and less cooperative, displaying contrast between the effect and the cultural perception.
Testosterone has a few other effects, among those is that they disrupt receptors for female hormones that promote maternal behavior and bonding. Dog-human interaction promotes excretion of that female hormone in both humans (men and women) and dogs, a finding that itself has made some news.
In modern time, social status still play a huge role. High status for men is highly correlated with successful reproductive success, better health and longer life. The benefit of having testosterone rise after gains in social status is a biological balance act, boosting protective behavior at a time where the potential risk from a loss in social status is at their peak. It also illustrate why testosterone levels goes down after a partner has given birth, as at that time the cost of lower social status is significant less and the benefit of improved bonding capabilities is a reproductive advantage.
So if they want to make it/continue their careers after having children, they need to take themselves much more seriously in their 20s.
There is absolutely a correlation between education being focused on female success (a combination of predominantly female teaching staff and optimising for traits generally held by women such as agreeableness) and the trends we've been seeing for 30 years now.
Unfortunately this is not the popular narrative, but it does need to be discussed.
EDIT: I, unlike the parent, am not trolling, so if you're going to downvote I would prefer a rebuttal.
Citation 1 (agreeableness as a direct consequence of academic success): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160802...
Citation 2 (women on average are more agreeable than men): https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00178
Citation 3 (Gender distribution of academic success over the last few decades): https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb2015/pxweb/en/STAT/STAT__30-GE__04...
Citation 4 (Gender distribution of teachers in the USA): https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clr
Citation 5 (Gender of teacher affecting academic performance of same gender): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/696203
So we have direct correlation with a personality trait, it being attributed to a sex and a seeming consequence.
I could be wrong, but while correlation does not equal causation: this does seem to be a very strong correlation.
As defined: “Systematic discrimination, also called institutionalized discrimination, refers to a method of discrimination which occurs regularly in the workplace as an inherent part of the company through interactions and processes creating a disadvantage for people with common set characteristics such as race, gender and disability over a long period of time. Systematic discrimination is not apparent at first sight but is actually systematic in its application of policies and practices.”
Similar evidence is presented commonly to explain why the executives are predominantly male, I'm not sure why the circumstances must be different here.
The University which had the programme I liked the most didn't offer for scholarships for men that I could apply for, only for women or trans-women.