Report Claims Men More Intelligent Than Women

Jeremy Dean writes "In controversial research reported all over the place, Richard Lynn, the emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University claims that, on average, men are more intelligent than women. Let battle commence! As the research is not yet published there's nothing more to go on than the press reports. The co-author of the study, Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, is apologetic about the findings. In the BBC News report he states that the paper will go on to argue that despite their disadvantage in IQ, there is evidence that women utilise their (lesser!) talents better than men. This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world."

Comments

IQ does predict stuff in the real world

[orz]

This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world.
I have not read the article yet, but the last study I read that dealt with IQ (the controversial study on Ashkenazi genetic diseases and intelligence) cited some sources saying that IQ testing is the best known predictor for salary, family stability, and a whole bunch of other things.

Re:Uh oh!

[arbitraryaardvark]

Based on reading the article, it isn't clear the women were given any incentives to do well on the test. No cookie, nothing. What I deduced was that women are smarter, and thus more likely to game the results, appearing a little less smart than they are.
In a competitive social environment, there is a tactical advantage to being a little smarter than people think you are. Apparently women are a bit more in touch with this strategy. Run the study again, but tell them there's a $100 payoff for scores over 125, and watch the scores jump.
I might be wrong, but it's testable.

Re:Oh boy...

[Phat_Tony]

This is an interesting bit I've heard before. I don't know which curve has a higher mean, but the standard deviation for IQ among men is much higher than it is among women- there is a higher percentage of both idiots and geniuses among men than among women. It also happens that men's distribution curves have a higher standard deviation when measuring a whole lot of things- height, weight, metabolism, visual acuity, and many other things. It seems most likely that having the XY chromosome set results in a wider variance of expression than the XX chromosome set even for traits whose expression is primarily controlled by other genes.

It's easy to see why evolution would favor this outcome. Evolution favors any benefit that increases the probability of gene survival, which correlates with amount of reproduction. A woman who survives has a probability of attempting to reproduce (obtaining intercourse) of approximately 1. That is, nearly every woman who's capable of surviving is capable of getting a guy to have sex with her. Men, on the other hand, face a much more precarious situation. One highly successful male might copulate with many different women, while an unsuccessful male may never get the chance to reproduce at all.

Game theory tells us that, (ceteris paribus) lower chances of obtaining a goal, as well as exponential gains in the case of success, are both formulas that favor using a higher risk strategy. Thus, a higher standard deviation. Evolution is set up to favor greater genetic risk taking in males than in females.

Re:Role of women in society.

[Jeremi]

How many television shows have you seen depicting the man with lesser intelligence

The telling detail is that all the shows you listed as examples are comedies. Their purpose is to get the audience to laugh, and one way they do this is by presenting a situation that is the opposite of what the audience would expect: in this case, instead of the male being the competent leader, it's the female who is smart and makes him look bad, to humorous effect.

Try naming some "realistic drama" type shows where the female characters are the smarter/in-charge/competent characters. That would be more convincing.

Re:Obviously, we *are* more intelligent

[ThaReetLad]

You can't be very good at it if you can't tell we can't read minds.

On a more serious note, it's worth pointing out that it's been known for some time that men have a wider range of IQ at both ends of the scale. Although men may, on average, be slighly brighter than women, at the top end of the scale men outnumber women 5-1, but that's also true at the bottom end of the scale. More of the really stupid people are male too.

Re:Let me be the 1st

[quenda]

So in conclusion -- according to him -- blacks and women are dumb. Caucasian males is the way to go.

No, he says no such thing. TFA refers to statistics. Differences in probablility and average. And the real significance is not in averages, but in the extremes.

Why do people get so upset at hearing claims that most geniuses are men, but will happily accept that most criminals are men? Did you know that the large majority of intellectually diabled people are male? Does that claim shock you too?

Secondly, "Caucasian males", as you put it, do not quite come out on top.