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How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence
theodp writes "In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."
IQ is more a measure of your 'working' memory and capacity to quickly understand new topics, it doesn't necessarily to what a person would call 'intelligent'. Allegedly GWBush was has a fairly high IQ (well at least 120+) yet, outwardly at least, he may not seem it.
Only recently have we even acknowledged that women are not inherently inferior to men, so is it so much of a surprise to learn that there is a strong cultural gender bias in favor of men being superior in intelligence?
In my own family, my mother is a medical doctor, while my father never made it through college, and despite this reversal, I have caught myself falling into the same traps and patterns that society at large puts out as truth that women are inferior to men in certain fields of study, if not all intellectual pursuits.
both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations
What's important is not reality but our perception of it. Men 1 - women 0.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Being intelligent is different than acting intelligently. Women definitely play down their intelligence, and men let them. Which causes all kinds of havoc like when the women's movement decides that it's OK to not include non-monetary income so that they can claim discrimination or can suggest that equality means that in the more esoteric and technically advanced fields it needs to be 50%. Even if the total degree count ends with them getting twice as many. And pay no attention to the changes in education that "fix" the inequality problem by creating a new inequality that's facing the other way.
Or that despite having more votes than men, it's somehow men's fault that we haven't had a female President and few female Senators. Subscribing to a lower set of standards is convenient when demanding reparations, but it's not the way to actually earn any sort of meaningful respect. What happened to women a century back and earlier has precisely nothing to do with the present day.
Women aren't stupid, but there's a shocking lack of interest in actually using any of it.
I recall reading an article earlier (no idea where it is now) that looked at exactly what the different genders "know" and are "smart at". Men generally fared well in the more science and maths based questions, while women fared significantly better at sociology and understanding emotions in others. Assuming this is true (and it seems accurate based on the people I know) then this may support the "men think they are smarter article". People generally associate intelligence with the sciences, while paying less detail to other parts that make up a persons intelligence. I would say that if the association with sciences and intelligence wasn't there, women would certainly see themselves as being quite smart. After all, how many women would say "oh, yes, my partner is so much better than me when dealing with an emotional crisis over the phone" and by the same token, not many males would say "My partner is certainly smarter than me, she knew just the right thing to say when I was arguing with my brother...".
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Here in North Carolina, women try to act dumb. Actually, there's nothing hotter than a good-looking drunk dumb chick. I met my wife in a bar, and we discussed physics and religion and still managed to get to a first date, but the funny thing is on other occasions I'd pretend to be a pilot, and she'd pretend to be a dumb blond stewardess. Actually, around here some of the guys try and act dumb, too. We've got a strong anti-intellectual culture. One thing that's a sure turn-off to a southern man is a woman who thinks she's smarter than him.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Well duh, that's what happens when people grow up in families with 14th-century gender roles. TFA:
Same idea there, and I suppose the divide is exacerbated by pop culture. Women are frequently depicted as being able to succeed based on their appearance as well as more negative traits. Sexual promiscuity is assumed to be a synonym for "empowerment". That moves the focus from intelligence and personality to "I can be rich if I release a sex tape". Even the "wholesome" teenage role model Miley Cyrus has been reduced to pole dancing. It's a shame given the number of female pioneers of geekdom.
Believe it or not, I live with a women and she could care
less about an IQ test. I would also like to go on record as
saying that she is much smarter than me Iloveyouhoney.
That intelligence != knowledge
I prefer ignorant != stupid. Ignorance can be fixed by gaining knowledge or understanding. Stupid is the inability to learn.
Perhaps if women (who complain about this) should get off the self-pity train and do what the rest of us do when we feel like we aren't getting a fair shake: square off, prove up and go down in flames if necessary. I'm pretty sure it was Dear Abby who said that nobody can take advantage of you unless you allow it. There's no bias against women in the vast majority of workplaces or academics. The only bias that exists is that people generally respect and trust coworkers who are straightforward in their interactions and behave in predictable (or predictably unpredictable)- and people who don't speak up because they are afraid of being shot down are not being straightforward, and doubly so when they finally get fed up and have a meltdown. It's got nothing to do with peepees and 'jay'jays.
In other words: lead, follow or get out of the way: the choice is yours.
Not at all, when men's issues are taken as seriously as women's are in the US, then you can call it a glib interpretation.
Try finding room at a shelter if you're a man that's been abused in general, especially so if the abuser is a woman. Or having to wait in line after the women have had their shot at the local homeless shelter. Good luck getting the police to protect you from an abusive woman. Or how mysteriously 1/5 of boys being sexually abused is conveniently rounded to virtually nothing when 1/3 of girls being molested is rounded up to most. Here's a hint those numbers are probably almost identical, women just don't admit that that happens to men as well.
It's really easy to claim that women are getting an unfair deal when you write off all the things which men have to put up with. Men are subject to conscription when there's a draft, women aren't. Men don't get any say in how a pregnancy turns out, but are still required to pay up in full, even in cases where the woman intentionally got herself pregnant. Including a shockingly common occurrence for her to stick him with the tab fore somebody else's kid.
The bias isn't going to go away until, women as a group decide to grow up and take responsibility for the crap they do to men. Men have taken much more responsibility for what they've done than what women have. Blaming men for things like female insecurity over looks, is just bigoted, that's not something that has anything at all to do with men, that's something that women do to each other.
Or that despite having more votes than men, it's somehow men's fault that we haven't had a female President and few female Senators. Subscribing to a lower set of standards is convenient when demanding reparations, but it's not the way to actually earn any sort of meaningful respect.
To assume that it's a "fault" that you haven't had a female president or that "meaningful respect" is a serious driver is very male-oriented thinking. Thing is, women aren't defective men, they're their own people with their own motivations. Only about 20% of women are motivated primarily by extrinsic factors such as pay and status, compared to about 60% of men (source: Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox. Women are far more likely than men to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as feeling that their work is doing some good.That means that fewer women reach the top because most women would rather be doing something they enjoyed. (For what it's worth, women consistently score higher than similarly qualified men for job satisfaction -- Pinker again. There's more than one glass ceiling, but we don't notice the job-satisfaction one because we choose male-oriented measures of success.
There is another reason fewer women reach the top, though: although the average intelligence of men and women is about the same, the variance is significantly higher in men. So women are right: if somebody does something really dumb then it probably was a man. But the other side of that coin, which women tend not to like so much, if that if somebody does something really smart, that probably was a man too
And for those whose mouse is hovering on the "flamebait" button, remember that this is about averages. Nothing I've said means that a woman can't be stunningly intelligent and can't be driven by money and power -- just that they tend to be less extreme and more sensible.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Stop right there.
Exactly what part of Miley Cyrus is "wholesome"? There's so much psycho-sexual pathology going on in the whole Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus phenomena that I'm betting there will entire textbooks written on the topic.
There will be an entire appendix just on Billy Ray Cyrus' uber-mullet vs Hannah's hooker wig.
The Miley Cyrus sex tape will be released in 3...2...1...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hypocrite much?
It's not bigoted. You conveniently left out the part where spousal abusers that happen to be female are treated far less harshly than males are. And that the police rarely enforce the law when it's the women that's doing the beating.
Despite the fact that spousal abusers are just as likely to be women and that the abused are just as likely to be men, there are very, very few resources that are available fore men that are in that situation. Trust me on this, I know from personal experience that women can get away with hitting men in public and people don't do anything about it.
Perhaps you should shove your bigoted views so that we can actually get some sort of progress. It's easy to claim the moral high ground when you conveniently pretend to be stupid.
Which is sort of ironic, since you've just proven my point, women are held to a lower standard, and these sorts of ignorant bitchy outbursts just reinforce the idea that women can't form a cogent argument.
Happy people make bad consumers.
"14th-century gender roles"
Mankind didn't evolve in the 14th century. Mankind evolved over millions of years. Feminists, today, are trying to redefine what men and women are. They blame culture for all the differences between men and women. But, various drugs have measurable different effects on males and females. Similar experiences in sports have vastly different results on their bodies. No matter how much some would like to pretend that there is no difference between men and women, it remains a fallacy.
As for intelligence - I've read many an article over the years, both before and after the advent of the internet. More women's intelligence are closer to the center of any scale, while more men are found at the far ends of any scale. Meaning, an idiot is more likely to be a male, and a genius is more likely to be a male.
Granted, IQ tests reflect whatever the authors consider to be important. Design a test that places greater importance on remembering actor's names, recognizing colors, remembering details of friend's and family's vital details, women will almost ALWAYS score higher than men. Design a test that places greater importance on spatial recognition, mechanical skills, and computing RBI's and such, men will almost ALWAYS score higher.
Gender roles? Since we've spent millions of years LEARNING our gender roles, I see nothing wrong with them. They work. They have ensured the survival of our species all this time.
Go ahead - mess with the roles, and teach the kids new ways. Tell the little girls that they don't have to be little girls, and little boys don't have to grow up to be men.
Has anyone noticed that the most "modern", "advance", "civilized", and "liberal" nations in the world have a decreasing fertility rate, while the barbarians continue to breed? Has anyone noticed the invasion of those "civilized" nations taking place all around us?
Let's wait another 100 years or so, and see how this all works out. Change those roles, and experiment, while the rest of the world retains the old roles. Don't be at all surprised if the Muslims and the Catholics inherit the world. The old fashioned roles WORK! Damn fools.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Here's a hint those numbers are probably almost identical, women just don't admit that that happens to men as well.
Actually, guys do it to themselves by underreporting abuse because it doesn't fit with the traditional notions of gender, (citations at bottom), though I agree the numbers probably are equal, and may even be higher for boys because of the expectation that they won't report it.
Good luck getting the police to protect you from an abusive woman
Most police are male, so honestly this is another of those cases where it has to do with guys own expectations of other guys.
Men don't get any say in how a pregnancy turns out
In cases of having the kid, I only agree with you if the guy wore a condom and did everything in his power to prevent pregnancy. In cases of aborting the kid, only if the guy legally obligates himself to raising and supporting the kid. Yes, the woman gets more say 'cause it's her body, so forcing her to either abort or give birth to a kid she doesn't want is a violation of her rights over her own body. That's just a matter of how the universe assigned biological functions.
Blaming men for things like female insecurity over looks, is just bigoted, that's not something that has anything at all to do with men, that's something that women do to each other.
Both genders are at fault here. Women drive each other crazy in part because men keep making it matter. Granted, even if men didn't care, women would still fight over looks, but men are still a big part of the picture. I've got friends in a religious community-the major reason they get drama about looks is 'cause of marriage. Hell, a bunch of comments on this thread basically say "me want hawt girl."
open source modern art: laser taggi
As a warmish rather than hot chick, I think, in general, that the smarter the man the more he values intelligence. Or that's what I keep telling myself, anyway.
I suppose you could be purposely obtuse and come away with that! I think it's fairly clear that if most jobs can be done by men or women and the society treats women as "equivalent" to males then most women will chose to work rather than have children. Since doing a good job raising children is WAY more work then most 20th century jobs, it's understandable. If your mom didn't have at least 2.1 to 2.3 children, assuming a developed country, then she contributed to the decline of your ethnicity. This has a number of consequences including the difficulty in funding retirement programs, like Social Security and Medicare, and replacing workers as the workforce ages.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
He presents it as a paradox that, on the average, people believe that their mothers were less intelligent than their fathers, and their grandmothers less intelligent than their grandfathers.
However, it is no paradox for men to be more intelligent than the women they marry (on the average), even though men and women have the same average intelligence. This merely requires that women tend to marry men more intelligent than they are, while men tend to marry women less intelligent than they are.
Of course, this give problems at each end of the scale-- men at the low-intelligence end of the scale and women at the high intelligence end of the scale both will tend to be unmarried. I'm not sure that this isn't the case, though!)
(Actualy, since the survey was of the children, not the actual couples, the statistics quoted will still be reasonable if, on the average, when a higher-intelligence women marries a lower-intelligence man they have fewer children than when a lower-intelligence woman marries a higher-intelligence man.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Perhaps if women (who complain about this) should get off the self-pity train and do what the rest of us do when we feel like we aren't getting a fair shake: square off, prove up and go down in flames if necessary.
"Square off, prove up and go down in flames" is a very male metaphor (and mixed). Why do you think women should act like men? Most of us don't have the testosterone for such an aggressive approach to life.
Women aren't on the self-pity train any more than men. We would just like things to be fairer becuae we tend to like thing to be fair. That's not inferior to your competitive approach or superior either.
I'm happy to listen to men complaining about where they are disadvantaged (family law courts for example). I happy to listed to anyone who feels they are being treated unfairly. It's not a victim competition - in this world we all get the rough end in some way or other.
These kinds of articles are always just troll bait. We now live in a male bashing society that is constantly trying to show how men are not really smart, and that women are really the smart ones. I suppose that we can say that this one isn't so bad because at least it claims we are women's peers. While there very well may be an intelligence difference between men and women, there is enough environmental difference that one is unlikely to be able to find it even with the best of tests.
The biggest factor is that if you take any group of people and split them into two groups. One gets taught that they don't have to provide for themselves, so anything they accomplish is just for their own gratification, and the other is taught that no one is ever going to hand them a free lunch, so they better figure out how they will support themselves, I think we can all figure out which group is going to end up smarter.
It is made abundantly clear to very small children that men need to earn their livings, and women earn a living if they want to. Even in today's society, little girls are informed that they can marry/sleep their way into being supported. No doubt, there will be a certain percentage of people that will end up dumb even if they believe they will need to support themselves, and some people will end up smart even if they don't NEED to be. The reason that it appears that there are more smart men then women isn't because women are not given credit. It isn't because evil men keep them down. It is because the group of smart women consist of the women that WANT to be smart, and the group of smart men include the men that WANT to be smart combined with the group of men that feel they NEED to be smart for survival. It should be no surprise that you get better results from the group that needs it for survival.
If women want to become men's intellectual peers, they need to start sleeping with men for their looks instead of their wallets. They need to make sure that starting at a young age, little girls are taught that they should pay for everything when they date men. Both young boys and young girls need to be taught that it is a woman's responsibility to financially support men, and that if a man supports them financially, the woman is a bum, and unworthy of being in a relationship.
Get these ideas instilled in our youth, and you will see more smart women and fewer smart men.
It may be mutilation...but it provides strong protection against HIV, a rather deadly disease.
So do condoms. Also, the one study that showed anti-HIV effects was found to have used cherry picked population samples.
What's always bothered me is that people insist on doing it to children. If it's so helpful, then parents would naturally wait until the child is old enough to choose for himself. I've always suspected that the reason it's done to children is that it's a part of culture, and that parents know that when the child gets old enough to choose for himself, their reaction will be "Oh, HELL no.".
How do you kill that which has no life?
It helps that a drunk woman will actually talk to you if you try to make conversation, instead of staring at you like you're a moron or a rapist.
SRSLY.
It goes beyond the stereotypes, because men tend to be more physically abusive while women tend to be more socially abusive. It's much easier to get evidence of the former, and there's a bigger stigma associated with it. Women are as likely to be abusive as men, but the kind of abuse they're likely to indulge in is not so obvious to a court of law or a jury. This tracks with developmental psychology's learning about children: as boys grow toward puberty they tend to be physically agressive, while as girls grow toward puberty they tend to be socially agressive. In both cases, there are people who never grow out of it.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I don't think he was making it out to be some sort of conspiracy. I think the finger he was leveling was more along the lines of "well, according to women none of these things ever happen".
He has a point. I recently read a lengthy article discussing the supposed "gender gap", where about 15 years ago a feminist group purchased a "study" claiming that girls were falling behind in American education - when in fact the opposite was true; girls did better in school, were happier, and more likely to go to college even then. After all the resulting chaos, that is even more true than it was - and still, women are somehow the repressed ones.
I digress, but it illustrates my point. We forced the president of Harvard to resign because he suggested that women and men were better at different things. God forbid a man attempts do say damn near anything that even timidly suggests a weakness of women - yet the very same women who would destroy that man can't seem to shut up about how men destroy the world.
There's a lack of women in engineering! Oh noes! Let's push them into it. But there's also a lack of male nurses and lawyers, and nobody seems too fussed.
IOW, there's a lot of blame for women as well. A man, let alone politician, can hardly suggest that boys/men need any help because he'd get eaten alive for "ignoring the multitude of problems women in America face everyday" or something.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
"Ripped from the headlines" example. - Tiger Woods and his wife Elin. If there roles had been reversed, if Elin had been the one with the cuts and bruises on her face, and Tiger the one swinging the club, he would have been arrested and charged just like Chris Brown was. So can somebody tell us why she isn't out on bail awaiting trial right now?
Actually, as a man I'd argue that that's true for any man.
I *know* that I'm better at some things than a typical woman. I *know* that men are inherently better at some things than women - at the risk of making a pun, they have the balls to take risks. I've seen a lot of men try math or science and succeed, and a lot of men try math and fail. Yet, I've rarely seen women "give it their all" in one of these fields, because women don't seem to try things that they aren't sure they can do.
Yet, I *know* that when men fuck up, they fuck up big. All of the stories about some guy lighting a match to see into his gas tank, or something similar, are about men. Less extremely, you have men who overextend their superior abilities and get killed. An EE (probably) won't be able to wire your house to code - but he may try and die. Women, again, don't try what they think they'll fail.
In short, men seem to be very good at some things, and forget that they're not that good at everything else - hence the abject stupidity. Women seem to be more constant - less super-bright spots, but a more even glow. Our society can't survive without both sides of the coin. If women had no power, men would destroy society. But if men had no power, we'd all get along but nothing would ever get done.
I know I come off as a douche. Sorry; there's no nice way to say it.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Reminds me of the cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how incompetetent individuals overestimate their competence (did anybody say middle manager?) while the truly competent underestimate their competence (aka. depressive realism). Maybe competent women are more vulnerable to depressive realism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
Xenophobic? Because I dislike ILLEGAL ALIENS? Hardly. Look at Mexico. It isn't composed of just "Mexicans". There are Latinos, there are Azteca, there are Mexicans (mostly composed of "Mestizos" - a term that has gone out of fashion) and there are several of those "indigenous peoples" mentioned in the article - Mayans and others.
Mexico has been engaged in a quiet campaign of genocide against those "inigenous peoples" since AT LEAST the time of the revolution.
When those Azteca feel that it's time to move on, they will start on the United States as it's next target. Care to peruse their "Patron Saints"? Visit here. http://blogs.uww.edu/introtolatinamerica/2009/11/01/patron-saints-of-the-mexican-drug-underworld/ Look closely - NONE of these saints has anything to do with Catholicism - these are the icons of death worshippers and criminals. Azteca - the people who regularly raided what is now the SW United States for victims to sacrifice atop their pyramids.
I'm all for LEGAL IMMIGRATION - that is where people apply for immigration, follow the rules, and eventually become naturalized, and swear allegiance to their adopted country. ILLEGAL ALIENS are an invading force.
Xenophobic idiot. Whatever. Open your eyes, and look at what is going on. There is conflict in this world that you don't see, and are happy to remain blissfully unaware of.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
All I can say is, Slashdot seriously needs some women posters, because this shit is shameful.
Property is theft.