Reader’s Question

I’m a young female from Denmark, and I have a question. I’m working on a school project about why the mindset of boys seems too simple, whereas the mindset of girls is always so complicated. For example, if a guy says he does not feel like going out, it’s just because he does not want to. It doesn’t mean anything more or less than that. But a girl would probably think such a simple decision might mean all kinds of things, like he doesn’t like her even though he actually might, etc.

Why are girls’ minds always going like crazy to find a “logical” explanation for something that’s really quite simple?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

I don’t know of any research clearly indicating that what you describe is necessarily base on sexual differences. Some folks — males and females — tend to read much more into things than others. They do this often to resolve what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance” or multiple notions that are incompatible with one another. Basically, they’re trying to make sense of a situation that doesn’t make sense to them but which at the bottom line simply “is what it is.”