Meaning of be wired to do

Are women “wired” to be more emotional? Not exactly — but new research provides more evidence that the male and female brain may have very different ways of processing emotion. How Men And Women Process Emotions Differently

Hi, I would like to know what "be wird to be" means.

I tried to google it, but I could not find a good answer.

Could you please help me?


It may be a metaphor in a way alluding to the behaviour of a system. Or it may be literal. We might also say "programmed".

If you think about the brain or the body in general, especially the nervous system, it resembles a network of connections, with signals travelling along them, supposedly causing our actions. An evolutionary sociobiologist might say we are wired as humans to especially be altruistic towards our kin. This might be metaphorical if alluding to the way an electronic circuit is wired to perform different things like making a light flash or turning a motor. Here is a picture of ENIAC, an old computer in the 1940s. Notice the cables (for the record, I don't know if those wire-looking things are cables or vacuum tubes). Each program would require changing the positions of these cables if you wanted to program something, like say, calculate artillery trajectory.

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In the literal and physical sense it's correct also because we have hundreds of billions of neurons which allow us to move and speak and think and generally act, the formation of which are encoded in or "programmed" by our genes, and influenced also by our environment too. On the topic of genes, the expression "Not in one's genes" colloquially means "not in one's nature."

Also, confer the expression:

get one's wires crossed
Also, have one's wires crossed. Become or be confused or mistaken about something, as in If you think there's a meeting today, you really have your wires crossed; it's not till next month . This expression transfers a wrongly wired telephone or telegraph connection to human misunderstanding. [Colloquial; early 1900s]
American Heritage Dictionary

So here's another metaphor about wires being wrongly arranged leading to mental quirks.

Also, an article from the BBC
Brains may be wired for addiction

The topic of the article is that some brains may cause certain individuals to be predisposed to becoming addicted.