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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."
Men have more variance in IQ, that's why there's more very smart men than very smart women. Of course, there's more very stupid men, which is reflected in crime rates etc.
There are so many theoretical & methodological problems IQ testing. Any analysis with IQ scores as a data set in inherently flawed. Garbage in, garbage out.
The problem with IQ testing has nothing to do with the science. The reason IQ is vilified is because of the unpalatable and highly inconvenient results that has been established time and time again over the last 100 years of intelligence research.
There may be more to it... Evolutionary pressure pushes men to sleep around, while women are the nest builders, even today. Guys look for young "hot" women and watch a lot of porn (I liked your link to Miley Cyrus pole dancing), because men want to leave their seed with a woman who will be around a long time to raise above-average kids physically (I'll bet her kids will be very healthy and good looking). Men rape women, not the other way around, because it succeeds in spreading their genes more widely, with nothing but a single night's work, while women have to actually birth the child and usually raise them. A lot of this may influence attitudes towards the relationship between men and women. A hot dumb drunk blond really gets my attention at the bars, and I don't think it's just me. And for a guy, I'm a nest-builder.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Another study of teachers, asked to estimate the IQ of their students, found they overestimated the IQ of extroverted kids, and underestimated the IQ of quiet kids. Males tend to be more extroverted than females, so that could explain the perception of males as 'smarter'.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
I think in general, people perceive that bolder, outspoken people are smarter - as if their boldness comes from understanding and knowledge. I also think that men (by virtue of testosterone) tend to be bolder than women. This get misperceived as intelligence, thus men are generally perceived to be more intelligent.
I can't believe you were modded up so far.
Are men and women innately different? Yes. Does that have any relevance in terms of modern society? Probably. Do their ideal roles in any way reflect their current societal roles? Not in any way shape or form.
There is one reason, and one reason only that you didn't see women in higher education before this past century: childbirth. Not child rearing, not pregnancy. Childbirth killed most women before they reach 30. Men, on the other hand, so long as they were kept out of the {mines, war, boats, etc.} would likely live to a ripe old age. These evolutionary pressures are gone, as are most of the unskilled tasks usually reserved for women. (You don't believe that, try doing laundry by hand. It's practically a full time job in and of itself.)
Keeping women in their old roles as housekeepers is a massive waste of brain power. By your (bullshit unverified) claim that women are average and men are at the extremes, it doesn't matter. In fact it's likely that genius and idiot alike are unsuited to making advances in the new era, which rely on hours and hours of work by large teams of people. Both geniuses and idiots work badly on teams.
But in any case, the issue of childbirth is the only reason for the old roles. We've solved that problem, and it's time to redefine the roles.
I'm third generation Californian (but live in NC now). As a result, I've got a lot of Mexican uncles, cousins, and such. My uncle Fernando told me when I was younger, "Intelligence in a woman is overrated." That's the excuse I give myself for marrying a complete moron in my first marriage. She is still a very sweet, attractive woman. I hope she's happy. I spent eight years figuring out what a mistake that was. Second time around, I went the other way, and I tell all my friends to look for a smart girl. After 11 years, my second marriage is still going gang-busters.
You're obviously a big geek. You post on slashdot. I can't even tell you how attractive I find that, but as you know, guys like me are in the minority. If I could give you one bit of advice... make your way to Silicon Valley
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
IQ tests can be biased and based on knowledge and wisdom instead of intelligence and potential to learn or think.
For example people here on Slashdot, we are very good with computers and technology, we find managers and rich people are not as smart with computer as we are. But while we consider rich business people to be stupid, they find us to be stupid when it comes to business and business decisions just as we find them stupid when it comes to computers and technology decisions. The thing is that everyone is intelligent at at least one subject, maybe even more. Even if it is street maintenance that only an autistic person is good at, they are intelligent at that if nothing else because they really have a passion for street maintenance or whatever their interests are. Usually one is intelligent at their interests, and the average Slashdot readers are good at math and science and computers because of their interests, and the rich business people are good at investing, finances, accounting, and turning over a profit. The Dotcom busts showed us that when computer people try to run a business without any business classes or experience, they tend to fail just as bad as the business person who tries a computer business but lacks the computer knowledge.
Men and Women have different interests and are intelligent at different areas. It even goes by political party as liberals are usually better in liberal arts and science than business management and accounting, while conservatives are better in business management, finances, and investing than liberal arts and science. I think it is the right brain verses the left brain, as people like me want to try and balance out the usage of the brain to use both sides.
But my theory is that everyone is intelligent at least at something. The people that score low in IQ tests are usually smart at stuff the IQ test doesn't cover like NASCAR, the WWE/TNA Wrestling, TV shows and movie trivia, culture, traditions, social skills, etc. So one person's idiot is another person's genius so to speak.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I don't know what world you live in, but the one I live in, regardless of whether or not they go to school or have a career, most (not all) women eventually want to raise children of their own. In an ideal world, women could raise children AND have a career. We live far away from an ideal world on a place called Earth, where months out of work are a serious setback, and where raising kids well AND dealing with workplace responsibilities is impossible unless you sleep 2 hours a day.
Agreed. As a gay man, my ex-best female friend went through an emotional period towards me (her actions suggested that she had feelings for me and was frustrated that my sexuality was in the way of that, as we got along brilliantly in every other regard). This resulted in her entering into a violent stage out of the blue where she felt compelled to hit me, often quite hard, and she had no shame about doing it in public. It hurt a lot, and I was extremely unhappy about it and did not feel that it was deserved in the slightest. Our female friends thought that it was funny and laughed about it despite the fact that it was clearly upsetting me, and they told me that I was being too uptight about things when I made it clear that I was really displeased with the situation. My male friends were actually quite sympathetic and told me that what she was doing was wrong and that it made them uncomfortable to watch.
Of course, hitting her back was not an option, because to do so even once would make me look like a complete asshole and possibly get me in serious trouble, while she held carte blanche to smack me around on her whims. In the end, because neither she nor our female friends would take what she was doing seriously or acknowledge it as a problem, it was just easier to end all of those friendships. Good riddance. I will think twice before striking up friendships with women again. Many of my gay male friends also feel the same way, especially after living second-hand through this situation, and prefer the company of men for more than the obvious reasons.
There are so many double standards for men that I find it funny we haven't responded against these more strongly.
"We would just like things to be fairer becuae we tend to like thing to be fair."
LOL. Yeah right. I've seen too much women backstab each other in the most vile, ruthless ways thinkable by man to believe this.
Lets stop idealization of women, okay?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
My problem with this is that, as women aren't more intelligent than men, the ideas that women come up with aren't any better than the ones men come up with. Hence, women's impression of "fairness" may be as stupid as what an IQ=100 dolt would produce.
To take an example from my country: The women's movement campaigned extremely hard against sports clubs and gentlemen's clubs (all 5 of them in the whole nation) that allowed only male members. Most of them opened up to women members. That was 5-6 years ago. But today, when I walk on the street, I see a "Female First" women's only gym on every corner. How is such a mindblowing contradiction possible?
By women's sense of 'fair' being no better product than Average Joe's. There's no particularly strong sense or logic more than any street movement in it.
In fact, this survey should have been done with 'Wisdom' as well as 'Intelligence'. Women subscribe to the view that they are 'wiser' than men, which justifies decision making without principles or logic to it.