Conference quark::mennotes-v1

664.0. "The Psychology of Gender Differences" by ESGWST::RDAVIS (Available Ferguson) Thu Oct 17 1991 17:02

    The article referenced below dealt with psychology, not physiology. I'd
    be very interested in finding out more about women's much-vaunted
    sensitivity to taste and smell (with factors like work environment and
    smoking and drinking habits taken care of).
    
    Ray
    
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Note 649.0            The Psychology of Gender Differences            19 replies
STAR::RDAVIS "Just like medicine"                    74 lines  17-JAN-1991 09:39
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The Autumn 1990 issue of "Signs" (a "Journal of Women in Culture and
Society") had a couple of articles on the subject of "Gender, Computers,
and Difference" (I especially liked the one about the Very Special
Friendship between the computer industry and the military) and an
interesting study of current "treatment" of hermaphroditism, but one story
keeps coming to mind while reading =wn=:  "Meta-Analysis and the Psychology
of Gender Differences" by Janet Shibley Hyde.  (Please, let's reserve
ratholes on "gender" vs. "sex" for the "Language" topic or JOYOFLEX....)

I first heard about what Hyde calls "meta-analysis" from epidemiology.  It
copes with the information explosion by applying statistical methods to
already published reports, in this case psychological studies on
differences between the sexes.  As Hyde points out, this surveying
technique brings up its own issues (for example, studies which showed no
difference between the sexes would be more likely to have "not proven a
thesis" in the '50s and therefore never be published, whereas such a study
would have "proven a thesis" in the '70s and would more likely see the
light of print), but has at least as good a shot at reality as each study
considered individually.

The article includes an amusing-to-scary history of such studies, and is
worth reading in total (as is the rest of the magazine), but in interests
of copyright and such, here are just a few highlights. 

   - The constructors of the standard Stanford Binet IQ test back in the
   1910s (amazingly) operated on the uncommon assumption that there was no
   innate difference in intelligence between the sexes, and worked over the
   test to make sure that the results averaged the same for both boys and
   girls.  (Too bad they didn't worry about class differences as well.) 
   This may explain the continued parity in average IQ.... 

   - All but a very few of the popularly accepted differences in mental
   abilities between the sexes are swamped by the standard deviations
   within each sex.  In particular, the difference for verbal ability is
   actually very small ("so small... that we concluded there is no gender
   difference"), and the differences for mathematical and most spatial
   abilities are "at most moderate" -- not of much use in predicting or
   explaining particular cases, or the vast disproportion of men to women
   in engineering careers (to pick an example at random).

   - The greatest difference between the sexes in standardized academic
   tests is in "mental rotation", which men are much better at.  Why? 
   Beats me.  I'm not good at it myself, so I hope it's not overwhelmingly
   important.

   - Another common idea is that women are more inclined to attribute
   success to luck or the easiness of the job and that men are more
   inclined to credit their own talents, and that this helps to explain
   men's relative academic and financial success.  In fact, the differences
   in attribution appear to be insignificantly small.  Maybe there's some
   external reason for the difference in financial success? 

   - Studies on social behavior (i.e., how much of a jerk one is) are
   fairly recent, so there's not as much data to munge, but these
   (surprise!) present the most dramatic differences:  women are more
   likely to pick up on nonverbal cues, to express emotions clearly, and
   much more likely to be "expressive".  Given the amount of pressure on
   men to stay stone-faced and women to react (e.g., Woody Allen makes the
   joke, Mia Farrow laughs), this is about the only sexual difference which
   overwhelmingly matches my (anecdotal) experience.

   - Men are moderately more "aggressive", but again the difference between
   sexes doesn't seem as important as the standard deviation within the
   sex, and the differences lower with increasing age (and with the age of
   the study, which is probably good news).  The difference is more marked
   for physical than for psychological aggression.  Big surprise there,
   what with all the gay-bashing that B.U. field hockey players have been
   doing lately.

"Signs" is available from your local pretentious newstand or from The
University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago,
IL, 60637.

Ray
    
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�    What is "mental rotation"?
    
   The ability to spin one's brain around and around without moving one's
   head.
   
   No, no, not really -- I can do THAT easily enough -- it's the ability to
   picture an object, then picture it rotated.  Some tests show a picture
   of a bunch of blocks stuck together and then have a multiple choice of
   pictures underneath, and you're supposed to pick the pictures which are
   of the same blocks turned around.
   
   Ray

re: .0
    
>   - Another common idea is that women are more inclined to attribute
>   success to luck or the easiness of the job and that men are more
>   inclined to credit their own talents, and that this helps to explain
>   men's relative academic and financial success. 
    
    Many women may attribute their success to luck or easiness of the job
    primarily because they are taught to doubt their own abilities, and
    some women have poorer self-esteem.  There is a documented phenomenon
    known as the "imposter phenomenon", where the person feels that any
    success or achievement they accomplish, or any positive aspect of
    themselves, is a fluke, or a falsehood. So in this case it may be the
    culture, rather than anything inherent in the woman.
    
    As for mental rotation, the only 3D-style video game I can play with
    any facility is Tempest, which is more like 2D, actually.  I didn't do
    badly at Marble Madness, but that was because the trac-ball was so fun.
    
    -Jody

    It's long been my conviction that men are even more driven by hormonal
    cycles than women, and also long been my hope that I could follow in
    the steps of so many mennoters and post something grabbed off the net
    with absolutely no analysis expended by myself. After all, if it's on
    the net it's got to be true, and who wants to waste time reading a
    bunch of boring old books anyway....
    
    Ray
    
    
Subject: Men get dumber in Fall?
    
 
From a newspaper article attributed to Newsday:
 
When a man's sexual desire is at its highest, his spatial abilities are 
at their lowest, according to a new study.
 
Canadian pschologist Doreen Kimura of the U. of Western ontario said she found
that men perform better on tests of spatial reasoning in the spring, when
their levels of testosterone are usually low.
 
In the fall, when testosterone levels and desires are at a peak, men score
worse on tests, she said.
 
Kimura said she tested testosterone levels from saliva samples collected
from dozens of men. They also were tested on their spatial reasoning--
the ability to solve problems such as arranging objects or finding hidden
figures in complex designs.
 
"It's not that the male becomes spatially incompetent, but people have to
be aware of seasonal fluctuations", she said.
 
Her findings were presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society
for Neuroscience in new Orleans. Three years ago, she ignited a flurry
of controversy when she found that women's verbal abilities improve as
estrogen increases during the monthly menstrual cycle.
 
The results could have implications for the time of year men should take 
standardized tests such as the SAT, she said.
    

    Isn't it also known that testosterone causes hair loss? Here's the kind
    of model my old statistics professors might have drawn, with causality
    running from left to right:
    
                      Baldness
                     /        
         Testosterone
                     \ 
                      Dumbness
    
    This would seem to imply that baldness is an indicator of stupidity,
    which is a classic kind of thing for psychology sophomores to study.
    Does anyone remember such a finding? Any guys (with hair, preferably)
    care to offer an opinion either way? Maybe this will start a trend,
    i.e. bald jokes instead of blond jokes.
    
    - Hoyt (who has all of his somewhat-blond hair)

    I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot barber pole...
    
    ed

    Anecdotal evidence suggests that baldness is actually a sign of
    mathematical abilty (I had a professor who was bald).
    
    Anyway, I would caution against drawing too many conclusions from the
    newstory. The survey summarized in .0 points out that the ONLY notable
    difference between the sexes on standardized intelligence tests is that
    men do better on "mental rotation", which counts as "spatial
    abilities", but I assume that men tend to have more testosterone than
    women.  It's the CYCLE which messes with our heads, not the AMOUNT.
    
    Wait... what am I saying? This is NOTES, go ahead and draw any
    conclusions you want... draw bunny heads on napkins if you like...
    
    Ray

    >I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot barber pole...
    
    What if its got a chain saw on the end of it? Sorry guys! I just fell
    in love with my old chain saw. Started it up to drop some trees.
    Zing!!! Wounder if the testeron level has something to do with violent
    acts agianst trees??? :) Watch out!:)

>Wounder if the testeron level has something to do with violent
>    acts agianst trees??? :) Watch out!:)
    
    Only for men who aren't expressing their testosterone levels by the normal
    channels.
    						- Vick

Someone's arguing biosocial feeback again!  Quick!  Get Applegate...