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[citation needed]
Flippant quip aside, I partly agree with your assertion. In my experience, women are more likely to seek consensus. That probably generalizes, since women are about half a standard deviation higher on the agreeableness scale than men, on average.
I disagree that the gender analogy (women : popular ideas) is (men : true ideas). Quite frankly, I see as much popular bullshit spewing from men as I do from women. What I agree to, however, is that (in general) when women discuss a subject they are likely to converge towards a consensus opinion without much overt argument, whereas (again, in general), men will overtly argue for their takes, and use the arguments as opportunity to jockey for position among their group.
Here's the thing: I am a mathematician, and I worked and argued with plenty of other women in math, tech and engineering, who tend to be more disagreeable (in terms of Big-5 personality traits) then women in general. The disagreeable women are no more likely to gently gravitate to consensus then the equally disagreeable men.
Meanwhile, when I worked with teachers (who tend to be more agreeable), I had employ extreme teaching techniques to encourage them to push back on another's asinine assertions, men as well as women.
On truth-seeking versus popular-ideas-seeking: engineers and techs are just as motivated to determine the truth, be they men or women, because in those fields, you test your ideas against reality, and reality doesn't care about the provenance of your ideas. Writers and philosophers are just as motivated to determine what will be popular (or better yet, viral), be they men or women, because in those fields, the test for your ideas is the potency of them as memes--how well your ideas compete for memetic space within your society (more importantly, the part of that society that determines your social status).
So I assert that the pattern you observe--that women tend to gravitate to popular opinions while men appear to seek the truth--is best explained by two factors:
Women are more agreeable then men, in general;
Men are more concentrated in fields where ideas are tested against reality, and women are more concentrated in fields where the value of ideas are in their memetic potency.
PS. This is also a response to @monoamine and @falling-star, giving an N = 1 sample for how a female Mottizen replies to the post.
Lizard brain moment.
Male communication among other males is (often physical) combative and jockeying until status hierarchy is established. Then once the hierarchy is established, there is peace. When status is gained from being right in this hierarchy, and the main method of jockeying is attacking their position for being wrong, then naturally this will align towards truth-seeking over time. A male will get drunk and attack the concept of gravity until someone (usually another guy) pushes him off a ledge.
Female communication among other females is memetic, status is not gained from being right but by being convincing. Women don't care about the concept of gravity, what matters is if they can get other people to agree with them that gravity exists/doesn't exist. They are not going to push anyone off the cliff to test that theory, because they (correctly) intuit that the fall will kill one of them.
I am trying to parse your argument, since it's in the "if A then B" form and you didn't explicitly claim that A is true (here: A = "male status is gained from being right").
If you were asserting that male status is gained from being right, then your entire argument would imply that no male-dominated society will have top-down beliefs that were contrary to reality. How I wish that were true, but history proves otherwise. (see most religions, or North Korea)
(case in point: every geek that got bullied by the popular jocks)
Rather, I assert that men as well as women gain status not from being right but by being convincing. Many men tend to do it in a more straightforward argumentative way, many women tend to do it by building coalitions and seeking consensus, I will give you that. (Always exceptions, I know enough agreeable men and disagreeable women to know that the generalization doesn't always hold.)
Half there, guys seek status in many ways and contexts. Being right is one. If there is more status to be gained by beating the other guy's head in with a rock, unga bunga applies. The point is, men attack each other to figure out where they stand. Conflict comes from not knowing where they stand and where others stand in relation to them. If you don't know how strong/tall/rich/smart that guy is, you're gonna try and find out.
How about:
Among men, men get status through demonstrating situational-appropriate competence. When the group already has a clearly established hierarchy of competence, men defer along the hierarchical lines. If hierarchy is not yet established, or new evidence suggests that the established hierarchy is no longer deserved, men jostle for status primarily in confrontational style that calls into question the level of competence of the one who slipped up as compared to the challenger.
Do you agree with this generalization? If not, what part would you change?
Don't agree with this statement. As mentioned, competence is not the only metric. It is the metric when competence is what is being measured.
If you're measuring strength, then the strongest man wins, no amount of bullshitting will stop the stronger man from being stronger.
In my observation, I have noticed that male conflict comes from not knowing who is to be master. Once they know where they stand in relation to other males, there is less conflict. This is why I consider the male conflict model better at aligning for truth-seeking, because they will fight each other until they figure out what wins (and what wins is usually rigorously tested by other men trying to attack or disprove it).
Female conflict is different. I have observed that female conflict comes from the struggle to identify and ostracize the outlier that might cause trouble to the group (pick your group, family, workgroup, sports team, social network circle). Therefore, the conflict model trends towards groupthink over acknowledgement and acceptance of any truth that might cause issues within the group.
Thanks for clarifying your perspective!
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I think you've got cause and effect completely backwards on your second factor.
Yes, you are right. I agree that, because a field's goal is memetic potency, women are more likely to be drawn to it. Thanks for pointing that out.
On the other hand, there is a reinforcing factor at play, too. If someone falls ass-backwards into mathematics, one will still learn how to question assertions and demand proof. If someone gets steered into social studies, one will still learn how to test the waters with some friendlies--and to do it subtly, in I-came-across-this-thought kind of way--before publicizing it more broadly.
The reinforcing factor is more like a loop: E.g., because most mathematicians are disagreeable, the confrontational style of argumentation gets more highly prized in the field. E.g., because most social studies teachers are agreeable, consensus-building styles get more highly prized in the field.
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