Slashdot Mirror
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."
Why isn't anyone raving about the Twitter feed called Shit My Mom Says?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
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.
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.
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...".
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
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.
Clearly this is the case. Men haven't been able to win domestic arguments since clubbing and dragging was considered a valid way to conduct discourse.
That intelligence != knowledge
I prefer ignorant != stupid. Ignorance can be fixed by gaining knowledge or understanding. Stupid is the inability to learn.
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.
But you can't figure out how to log in.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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)
Allegedly GWBush has a fairly high IQ (well at least 120+)
(Allegedly there, I FTFY.) That's alleged by people who allegedly have an allegedly low IQ themselves (well at least 80-, allegedly) and will, I allege, show up shortly to allege otherwise. I'll also allege that I'd like to hear what new alleged topics Bush allegedly had the capacity to allegedly understand.
They allegedly always allege that Bush was allegedly smarter than Obama (allegedly our new president, although he allegedly has some alleged paperwork problem allegedly involving his alleged birth in the State allegedly of Hawaii- allegedly one of the States which are themselves alleged to be United- that magically [allegedly] transports his alleged birth to the alleged nation of Kenya as if that would allegedly make them alleged victims even if it were allegedly true in the alleged first place).
Now before anyone allegedly jumps on me, please allegedly remember that I allegedly only alleged these things were alleged, so I'm allegedly sorry.
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.
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.
"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
... and on Slashdot they are likely to be the same person!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I think the real reason men feel they're more intelligent than women can be summed up in two words: "Twilight Saga".
So the evil liberals and their oppressive egalitarian agenda are leading to the downfall of society and the invasion of Muslim barbarians? Did you forget to take your medicine today?
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 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
Even the "wholesome" teenage role model Miley Cyrus has been reduced to pole dancing.
I can't see how she was ever a "wholesome" role model. Even before she started dancing around half naked, she encouraged young girls to base their self esteem on good looks and their parents wealth.
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.
^ Deary, I.J.; Irwing, P.; Der, G; Bates, T.C. (2005). "Brother-sister differences in the g factor in intelligence: Analysis of full, opposite-sex siblings from the NLSY1979". Intelligence 35:451-456.
There you go, have a citation for male IQ results having a higher variance than female.
What, you want an online ref? Here's one about math tests
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121691806472381521.html
The neurological basis appears to be that males have more pruning during the final stages of brain formation. This can result in more efficient pathways, but has less redundancy.
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 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!
Me specifically? No. But in terms of caffeine providing a general cognitive boost:
Caffeine's effects on true and false memory.
Capek S, Guenther RK.
Sensitivity to change in cognitive performance and mood measures of energy and fatigue in response to morning caffeine alone or in combination with carbohydrate.
Maridakis V, O'Connor PJ, Tomporowski PD.
[The effects of energy drinks on cognitive performance] [Article in Dutch]
van den Eynde F, van Baelen PC, Portzky M, Audenaert K.
Just to name a few : P.
Reminds me of the old joke: Women are animal lovers, they want a Jaguar in the garage, a tiger in the bedroom, and a jack-ass to pay for it all.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
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)
If you plot the number of sexual partners, you'll find men have a curve that rises, peaks at around four (if I remember right), and then descends... a smaller number have had 8 partners, a still smaller 12, etc. It's a pretty normal distribution.
The chart for females is shaped differently. It has a larger peak at a lower number than men (say, three), descends rapidly... but then flattens. When you get up to HIGH numbers of sexual partners (15, 20, 30), there are more females at that level than males.
In other words, most women have fewer partners than men; but a small number of women have FAR more partners than most men.
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.
General Eligibility Requirements for U.S. Citizenship
To apply for U.S. citizenship, applicants must:
*
Be at least 18 years old at the time of filing the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400
*
Have been lawfully admitted to the United States
*
Have resided as a permanent resident in the United States for at least 5 years or 3 years if you meet all eligibility requirements to file as a spouse of a U.S. citizen
*
Have demonstrated continuous permanent residence
*
Have demonstrated physical presence
*
Have lived for 3 months in the USCIS district or state where the Application for Naturalization, Form N-400 is filed
*
Demonstrate good moral character
*
Show an attachment to the U.S. Constitution
*
Be able to read, write, speak, and understand basic English
*
Demonstrate a knowledge of U.S. civics (history and government)
*
Take the oath of allegiance to the United States
Please see the links on the right of this page to learn if you are eligible and how to apply for U.S. citizenship.
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=ce2b2cd1f7e9e010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=96719c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD
I beg to differ with you. We most definitely have a huge criminal element who comes here, with NO DESIRE to become citizens. Drug mules, money launderers, etc etc ad nauseum. Oh yeah, the human trafficers.
But, aside from the worst of criminals - most of our 20 million ILLEGAL ALIENS became criminals by reason of having come here ILLEGALLY. The United States is, after all, a sovereign nation, which has the right and obligation to limit immigration. Millions are breaking the law by being here. Hence, criminals. We don't need no more criminals - we have more than enough.
"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
Fail? I'm sorry? You actually got a laugh out of me by using that word, in context of your post.
I'm enjoying how you cherry picked out of Wikipedia without understanding what you're cherry picking, or even reading the rest of it.
As far as social status... there's not a single study I can find supporting your claim.
From about 10 lines below where you cherry picked YOUR quotation...
The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns[9] states that IQ scores account for about one-fourth of the social status variance...
ROFLMAO. It has almost as much predictive power of social status as your parent's tax bracket... which is to say "extremely high".
Now, lets get to the quotation that YOU cited.
You DO understand that in psychology, a 0.6 correlation is ALMOST UNHEARD of, it's so high? By statistical analysis, that means that fully 40% of "job performance" is directly predicted by a (usually childhood) Stanford-Binet IQ score. And as you stated "Job performance" is the most direct indicator of future income. Were you trying to claim this is "fail"? Seriously?
The only numeric metric that correlates higher than IQ with future income is actually 8th grade standardized testing scores, which in several studies actually has around a .85 correlation, predicting over 70% of future income across a broad range of social and economic classes.
I'll also happily point out that the only study coming up with the 0.2 number you cited was studying UNSKILLED LABOR jobs, where simply showing up to work was a stronger predictor of "job performance", yet IQ STILL had a statistically significant (though small) impact on job performance across all social spectra.
And.... since we're quoting Wikipedia, I'll pull down some citations from the rest of the article that you conveniently decided not to quote. Note that Wikipedia doesn't cite very much of the research that's out there - it's just scratching the surface.
According to Schmidt and Hunter, "for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance is general mental ability."
Other studies show that ability and performance for jobs are linearly related, such that at all IQ levels, an increase in IQ translates into a concomitant increase in performance.[76] Charles Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, found that IQ has a substantial effect on income independently of family background.
Wikipedia goes to great length to point out varying opinions, noting that ACROSS THE BOARD, for all job types, IQ generally is viewed to have a correlation of around 0.4 to 0.6 on average for skilled occupations. That's about the same correlation that "having unprotected sex one time with someone HIV positive" has with "getting HIV".
Significant enough?
While we're on the topic, the correlation between IQ and income actually goes up substantially as the worker gains more experience. So while it may be valid to say that "experience" is a more accurate predictor of job success and income, it's also accurate to say that IQ becomes MORE correlated with income as experience increases, which simply leads to the conclusion that people who score higher on IQ tests are able to grow their income as a faster rate than those who do not. Note, I'm carefully NOT calling these people "smarter", because IQ is just one sort of test, but it is a metric that DOES have a valid, strong statistical correlation with many things.
But since I'm sure you've already decided to disagree with me, there are other things (like it or not) that IQ correlates with. This may have nothing to do with "being smart" but somehow, the test is a valid statistical indicator of these things.
People with a higher IQ have generally lower adult morbidity and mortality. Post-Traumatic Stress Dis