Why is chess still so much more popular among boys and men? It seems the most common thing girls and women say about chess is that they want to learn the rules, or the rules are complicated, or they think they remember the rules but want to brush up. Most boys and men seem to just know, and I actually can't remember struggling with the rules. That isn't an intelligence difference, but it's some sort of orientation difference. If I had only played 3 games of chess ever, then yes, my comment about the game might include the rules. But after a dozen games, I don't think anyone struggles with the rules at all, or very very little, and only some rare detail like "en passant" that frankly you could spend a lifetime of playing never thinking about and it would be fine (though I'd be extremely surprised if you never bumped into that rule in a lifetime of playing, now, thanks to the internet and so on).

I think most of us understand on an intuitive level that chess is more popular with boys/men because of its heads-up competitive nature. We can sense that it is a little bit like the bucks fighting over a doe. How much of this sense is literary metaphor, how much societal expectation, and how much evolved instinct - I'm not sure anyone can say or quantify precisely.

But here is a clue. Bobby Fischer was without a doubt one of the greatest, most ingenious, most accomplished players in chess history. What motivated him to play? His answer is famous: "I like the moment I crush a man's ego."

That isn't something I like. I've often suspected I'm not very good at chess partly because I'm just not that into beating people. Motivation is missing to get so good that I reliably crush egos. And I've heard many girls and women say similar things. (On psychology tests, I tend tend to come up as rather feminine and also as a bit less sadistic/psychopathic than average. I actually am just "nicer by nature," it seems, at least a little bit.)

Sadism is a normal component of human nature. We might want to deny this and claim we are not ourselves sadistic, not one little bit, but I guarantee you that you are at least one little bit. When people mock others, when they feel good because someone failed, when they tear down the rich and famous, when they feel satisfaction as the bad guy gets it at the end of the movie - these are all instances of normal levels of sadism. You are enjoying someone else's suffering. Maybe you feel that's good and justified or normal and ok - I didn't make a value judgment, but you are enjoying someone's suffering, and that capacity goes by the name of sadism. Even just insulting someone when you're angry with them is evidence of normal levels of sadism.

Men tend to be a little more sadistic on average - most people are willing to recognize that testosterone plays a role in this (as I suspect it does, but I freely admit there are many uncertainties and I defer to current and future science). And when you think about it, competition and sadism must be related. If you felt total empathy for your competitors, it wouldn't seem to matter who won or lost - you'd want them to win. Hell, you might even help them by giving up. If they want it so badly, sure, they can have it. Then you can appreciate that they are happy.

And that's why girls and women are not often as good at chess as boys and men are.

We aren't supposed to say, now, that girls and women "aren't competitive" - and after all, that isn't even true. But testosterone does drive (some of) competition and it does lower empathy and it probably contributes to sadism - to what Bobby Fischer craved as he studied and practiced so hard to beat everyone else at chess.

There's even another related angle, here. Women almost universally talk about how much they like a guy who can make them laugh. And indeed, surveys show most people, regardless of gender, rate humor highly in a romantic partner. But why do women talk about this so much, as if it mattered more than everything else?

Most things that women especially like in men, when you look at them, correlate with testosterone and resource provision.

Think about the funniest comedians. Many of them are men. Not all of them. That would be stereotyping. And saying women can't be great comedians - sexist and untrue. But there's an imbalance.

Think about what comedians say to make people laugh.

There's a correlation between funniness and meanness. And there's a correlation between meanness and testosterone. And there's a correlation between testosterone and gender.

Women seem to like funny guys so much not just because it makes them feel good to laugh (surely that is about equally true of everyone), but because people with more testosterone will be a bit meaner on average, and one fallout of that is that they will be a bit funnier on average. It's much the same with confidence. Higher testosterone tends to boost confidence. Women tend to suffer from lower confidence not just because the deck is stacked against them, which is true, but also because lower testosterone correlates with less confidence.

This is something we instinctively know. Confident people are "winners." They're confident because they can get away with being less careful, more carefree. Why can they get away with it? Because they are valued by others, perhaps even feared. Why valued and feared? Because they have won more battles, they have gained status, they have higher testosterone, which boosts their confidence and lowers their concern about what others think, because they can afford to not worry about it.