A new study says that for girls, preschool can be a lot like high school. The AP reports:

“Meanness in girls can start when they still are toddlers, a Brigham Young University study found. It found that girls as young as 3 or 4 will use manipulation and peer pressure to get what they want.

…They regularly exclude others and threaten to withdraw friendship when they don’t get their way. The “mean girls” are highly liked by some and strongly disliked by others. They are socially skilled and popular but can be manipulative and subversive if necessary. They are feared as well as respected.

… “The typical mantra is that boys are more aggressive than girls, but in the last decade we’ve learned that girls can be just as aggressive as boys, just in different ways,” he said.”

For our male* readers, this means that while you were learning to pee in a toilet, your dates / girlfriends / spouses were figuring out complicated pieces of psychology. They have about ten more years experience at this than you thought!

Surrender now, and no one will be hurt, unless you were only pretending to listen at dinner …

* sorry, heteronormative assumption coming up!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 11:47 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.