The Book was Right

The differences between men and women are always interesting to me. In my case, my mother is better at parking a car than my father - we typically say that men are better. I think, as you said in your entry, those stereotypes are not definite science. I wonder what factors in our body or brain make those differences.

When I read this in the book it definitely made sense to me, and it only seems to align with common sense. However I think its still important to be cautious about being to eager to accept the books claims based on the anecdotal evidence that you can apply to the literature. As the course has taught us, it's important to be critical, avoid confirmation bias, and think of example with which you can falsify a claim. For me personally, I can think of several examples where women are more qualified competent in their abilities to perform spatial, mathematical, etc. task versus speaking or writing tasks. I can same the opposite may hold true for men. The book however did cite experimental findings which made their claims easier to accept, and overall I agree with what you are saying.

I felt the very same thing while I was reading the book. They mentioned that men are better at spatial abilities, which is reading maps and figuring out a sense of direction. Within my family, all of the men are better at their sense of direction versus the women, and all of the women are better at verbal tasks versus the men. This actually made me laugh to myself, because it is so true. Also, I thought that the curve for the IQ's with men and women seen accurate as well. There seem to be men on both ends of the curve and more women in the middle. This seems accurate with the types of people I know.

It is an interesting result...How do you think this might bias intelligence tests? Or does it?

I think I am not very good at spatial tasks, but I am excellent at reading maps, just because I think I trained myself to be by working a job where I had to make deliveries. However, my mom is terrible and thinks that whatever direction we are driving is going north on the map!

Personally, I think it is too much of a generalization to say that men are good at geography and women are good at English. I like to think that I am pretty good at both of these disciplines, yet could be a bit better in Science. Due to this, I think you have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

I can see where the book is coming from, but I see differences in my own life from the book. For example, my friend (a guy) is TERRIBLE at anything spatial; he cannot remember for the life of him how to get to certain places, and needs a GPS even though he has driven to these certain places enough that someone would be able to remember how to get there. It seems to be this way with my dad and brother as well, however the book isn't talking about EVERY single person, but rather a mere generalization.

I think that this topic is quite interesting. For me i find the book to be true. Most of my guy friends and I are pretty good with directions and can remember how to get to places even if we have only been there once and the friends that are girls even my mom are not very good with directions but are all very good with verbal tasks. I would be interested to see what the percentage of the population would match what the book says.

I think mental abilities should be determined based off of individual results, not by categorizing males and females. For example, men are said to be better drivers than women (as mentioned by Professor Gonzales in lecture) due to better spatial ability, but I feel like my mom is a better driver than my mom and even my dad admits it! The book also said that men are better at advanced math subjects (such as trigonometry and calculus), but I (a girl) feel like my math is strong. However, it is interesting to see how true these facts really are.

This actually kind of holds true for people in my life and me too. I'm female and I am absolutely awful with sense of direction and knowing which roads are which and where they lead you too. On the other hand, I have always exceeded in english courses and writing papers. My mother definitely exceeds in both though. My dad has good sense of direction, but has never been good at reading and writing. Science is weird. I kind of feel like people are all different. They're just who they are.

This is quite interesting because I can relate as well. I am great with my reading and writing skills but my husband is always telling me that I have no sense of direction because I easily get lost (even with a GPS). As for my husband, he's good with the geography and all but he does very poorly in his written/reading for school, simply because he dislikes the subject. This scientific claim holds true so far for a lot of us.

Nice picture!

I agree. I think we can never learn well something that we hate to learn.

Everyone has heard the old joke about men being stubborn and never wanting to ask for directions, but now it makes sense! Though we don't know if the stubbornness is more prevalent in men or women, we now know that an innate sense of direction really is attributed to men more than women. Who knew.