Science: Men are smarter than women

I'm 52 years old,reasonably intelligent,BUT about 90% of the things I've done wrong in my life were because of women...And I'd probably do them again the same way

So who's smarter now?

 

I have always wondered why anyone cared who was smarter as a group.
It changes nothing ... solves nothing ... accomplishes nothing ... and is ultimately a stupid endeavor to ponder which sex is smarter.

Edit:
I have to say that with the acceptance that there are individuals that surpass the boundaries of their group as far as personal characteristics ... It goes further towards making the question irrelevant in a practical sense.

 

And if you're going to apply AA type programs, to overcome tradition, or history, to make slots for women and minorities in fields which have been largely held by men, you absolutely have to have three things:

1] There needs to be a minimum threshold STANDARD, with applies absolutely equally to ALL, which sets a threshold to become, say, a Doctor.

2] For those talented men, who would have been destined to become Doctors, because they MEET the above Standard, but are "Bumped" to make room for a woman, or minority, who meets the standard, but scored somewhat lower...

There are only so many Doctor/Engineer/Scientist slots, and if you "Bump" a White Male, to make room for others, who also meet the STANDARD...

Well, the Bumped White Male, is Still a very talented and valuable resource. If he is not allowed to become the Doctor, you damn well betting make room, Slots, for him to be allowed to be come the NURSE, and not condemn him to being bumped all the way to janitor.

This is what is NOT happening with AA.

3] Once they're given the opportunity to become a Doctor, they no longer get the slightest of preferential treatment, or double standards to REMAIN or Advance as a Doctor!

Retention and Advancement absolutely have to be based on Merit and Accomplishment!

And once again, this NOT what we are doing in AA currently.

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Yes, fine. This makes perfect sense. Unfortunately...

No. Sorry, no. I can say without any need for qualifiers or hedging that this is totally wrong. It is well known, and has been for decades, that intelligence in adults is primarily genetic in origin, with less input from the environment than from heritable factors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

IQ heritability increases during early childhood, but it is unclear whether it stabilizes thereafter.[6] A 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association gave about .45 for children and about .75 during and after adolescence.[7] A 2004 meta-analysis of reports in Current Directions in Psychological Science gave an overall estimate of around .85 for 18-year-olds and older.[8] The New York Times Magazine has listed about three quarters as a figure held by the majority of studies.[9]

In other words, variation in measured intelligence is three-fours genetic, and one fourth environmental. This doesn't mean that environment plays no role at all. But there have been many, many studies investigating the heritability of intelligence, and the answer is that it's well above .5 in adults, and probably at least .75.

Conclusion: Intelligence differences between people are primarily genetic in origin.

 

My niece is one of the smartest people I know besides her parents, my sister and brother-in-law. She is also very unstable.

During grade school there was a test to come up with the most compound words. Second place came close to 100, she came up with 200.

 

There are certain issues with that, namely in the IQ test in which (from what I've heard) I would assume among the older population men fare better, but among people my age (20s) women would likely fare better. That's largely to do with men being more interested in lame video games (I say "lame" video games because some video games are actually intellectually stimulating and challenging), beer, etc., but it's probably more to do with the way that schooling has been geared towards women for at least the last decade and, despite the current generation of upcoming men falling behind, there are still new measures being taken to protect women and help these young women "break through the glass ceiling" they've already long since shattered.

But, to the actual idea of it, men tend to think differently and they fare better in different areas of life. The places where men fare better tend to be more "logical." These are math, the sciences, engineering, computing, etc.

 

There are clear differences between men and women. And IQ is not THAT important when you consider quality of life, strength of character, work ethic, emotional stability, self-disapline, compassion etc. Many a prodagy and many a genius has ended up in a bad place of despair.

Men in general can do some things better and often those are things are measured on an iq test. Women can do other things better---and often those are not so much measured on the iq test. So yep there is a descrepancy but it means nothing.

 

Actually, one of the secrets behind IQ tests is that they are usually designed so that men and women's scores will balance out. That is, if you include the right number of questions on clerical accuracy and verbal ability, and the right number of questions on spatial rotation and mathematical ability, and your test will show no difference between the sexes. Of course, the fact that this can be done at all suggests that the difference between men and women must be small, if there is one.

 

Intellectually there seems to be a clear difference, but I think it tends to be a matter of areas of aptitude, not a general and widespread thing.

 

In past generations, girls were trained to become women who acted as homemakers and child care givers. Today, our schools focus on making girls into doctors, engineers and ceos... and they largely ignore the boys.

There is no question that America is having difficultly competing in the international fiscal, industrial and scientific arena in the "Flat-Earth" of Globalization.

There was an ad campaign run by the National Negro College Fund, when I was young, which used the Motto " A mind is a terrible thing to waste "

Well, 64% of America is White, and 48% of those Whites are Males. Only a small fraction, less than 1% of those White Men come from households already "Bill Gates" level of wealthy. The Costs of a College Education, due largely to widespread public education financing, has been inflated to silly levels. Will those inflated costs, if you're not from wealth, and don't qualify for Grants or Scholarships, you don't complete an education.

There are 330 Million Americans X 65% X 48% X 99% = 102 Million American White Males of modest backgrounds.

Let's say for the sake of Argument, that Men and Women, and Whites and non-White Really are absolutely EQUAL in Talent, Ambition, and Dedication to pursue and achieve.

Lets Say that we are missing people in America to fill roles of Engineers, Scientists, and Computer Programers, to be competitive in the new Global Flat Earth.

Lets Say that the rate of people who met these requirements and talents are absolutely equal between Men and Women, Whites and Non-Whites, and turns out to be only 8% of any given population.

Well, that's 102 Million X 8% = 8 Million cases of Wasting the Human Resource of rare, and valuable talented people, which we really NEED, Because we evaluate almost solely on Race and Gender, because of AA, rather than Merit!

How much more competitive in the world Global competition would America be with those missing 8 Million Engineers, Scientists, and Programers!?

No Wonder America is not Competitive!

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In my case, I am practicing not judging women by the clothes they may not be wearing on the Internet and porting it to real life whenever I have the presence of mind to do so.

 

Doesn't really mean anything when the whole idea of IQ may be bogus. (See this article).

 

Well now you got me curious. So I typed sex differences intelligence into Google Scholar and got this from the first two pages; my summary and comments follow.


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Sex differences in intelligence: Implications for education.
Halpern, Diane F.
American Psychologist, Vol 52(10), Oct 1997, 1091-1102

Sex differences in intelligence is among the most politically volatile topics in contemporary psychology. Although no single finding has unanimous support, conclusions from multiple studies suggest that females, on average, score higher on tasks that require rapid access to and use of phonological and semantic information in long-term memory, production and comprehension of complex prose, fine motor skills, and perceptual speed. Males, on average, score higher on tasks that require transformations in visual–spatial working memory, motor skills involved in aiming, spatiotemporal responding, and fluid reasoning, especially in abstract mathematical and scientific domains. Males, however, are also overrepresented in the low-ability end of several distributions, including mental retardation, attention disorders, dyslexia, stuttering, and delayed speech. A psychobiosocial model that is based on the inextricable links between the biological bases of intelligence and environmental events is proposed as an alternative to nature–nurture dichotomies. Societal implications and applications to teaching and learning are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)



A longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence at ages 7, 11 and 16 years
Richard Lynn, Satoshi Kanazawa
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 51, Issue 3, August 2011, Pages 321–324

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence as a test of Lynn’s (1994) hypothesis that from the age of 16 years males develop higher average intelligence than females. The results show that at the ages of 7 and 11 years girls have an IQ advantage of approximately 1 IQ point, but at the age of 16 years this changes in the same boys and girls to an IQ advantage of 1.8 IQ points for boys.


Sex differences in the right tail of cognitive abilities: A 30 year examination
Jonathan Wai Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz, Matthew C. Makel
Intelligence. 2010;38(4):412-423.

One factor in the debate surrounding the underrepresentation of women in science technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) involves male–female mathematical ability differences in the extreme right tail (top 1% in ability). The present study provides male–female ability ratios from over 1.6 million 7th grade students in the right tail (top 5% in ability) across 30 years (1981–2010) using multiple measures of math, verbal, and writing ability and science reasoning from the SAT and ACT. Male–female ratios in mathematical reasoning are substantially lower than 30 years ago, but have been stable over the last 20 years and still favor males. Over the last two decades males showed a stable or slightly increasing advantage in science reasoning. However, more females scored in the extreme right tail of verbal reasoning and writing ability tests. The potential role of sociocultural factors on changes in the male–female ability ratios is discussed and the introduction of science reasoning as a potential new factor in the debate is proposed. The implications of continued sex differences in math and science reasoning is discussed within the context of the many important interlocking factors surrounding the debate on the underrepresentation of women in STEM.


Sex differences on g and non-g intellectual performance reveal potential sources of STEM discrepancies
Gina C. Lemos, Francisco J. Abad, Leandro S. Almeida, Roberto Colom
Intelligence, Volume 41, Issue 1, January–February 2013, Pages 11–18


The analysis of sex differences in cognitive abilities is largely confusing because these differences are masked by the pervasive influence of the general factor of intelligence (g). In this study a battery of five reasoning tests (abstract [AR], numerical [NR], verbal [VR], mechanical [MR], and spatial [SR]) was completed by a sample of 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population. Using a latent variable approach, mean differences on the general factor were estimated after examining measurement invariance. Results show that the difference, favoring boys in latent g increases with age from two to four IQ points. Further, boys outperform girls in all the subtests and the observed differences were generally explained by g. However, mechanical reasoning is a systematic and strong exception to this finding. For the young adolescents, the observed difference in MR is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents. Only 1 (young) or 2 (old) IQ points of the sex difference in MR can be accounted for by g. The findings suggest that the persistent – and usually neglected average large advantage of boys in mechanical reasoning (MR) — orthogonal to g – might be behind their higher presence in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines. A new look at this relevant social issue is proposed in this study.


Sex Differences in Intelligence Areas and Response Time Tasks
Bennett, Natalie
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/49041

Previous research has shown that although there may not be sex differences in general intelligence, males tend to outperform females in the areas of spatial ability and mechanical reasoning, whereas females have an advantage in verbal ability and perceptual speed. Following these findings of sex differences in particular areas of intelligence, the present study tested for sex differences in participants’ performance in response time tasks of different levels of complexity. We collected data from thirty-five Ohio State University students. In the first session, participants were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV) to produce IQ estimates. In accordance with previous research, we predicted that females would have higher scores on verbal ability and perceptual speed WAIS-IV subtests. In the second part of the study, participants completed four response time (RT) tasks of different levels of complexity. We hypothesized that males would outperform females on the signal detection task (the simplest of the RT tasks), whereas females would outperform males on the lexical decision task (reliant on verbal ability). Results showed that males did indeed have faster RTs than females in the signal detection task. Additionally, male and female RTs on this signal detection task correlated differently with subtests of the WAIS-IV. However, no sex differences were found on any of the other three RT tasks. Furthermore, no sex differences were found on any subtests of the WAIS-IV. These findings show that although sex differences may not be obvious in intelligence or RT performance, males and females may use different resources to complete the same task.

Sex differences in the adolescent brain
Rhoshel K. Lenroota, Jay N. Gieddb
Brain and Cognition, Volume 72, Issue 1, February 2010, Pages 46–55
Adolescence is a time of increased divergence between males and females in physical characteristics, behavior, and risk for psychopathology. Here we will review data regarding sex differences in brain structure and function during this period of the lifespan. The most consistent sex difference in brain morphometry is the 9–12% larger brain size that has been reported in males. Individual brain regions that have most consistently been reported as different in males and females include the basal ganglia, hippocampus, and amygdala. Diffusion tensor imaging and magnetization transfer imaging studies have also shown sex differences in white matter development during adolescence. Functional imaging studies have shown different patterns of activation without differences in performance, suggesting male and female brains may use slightly different strategies for achieving similar cognitive abilities. Longitudinal studies have shown sex differences in the trajectory of brain development, with females reaching peak values of brain volumes earlier than males. Although compelling, these sex differences are present as group averages and should not be taken as indicative of relative capacities of males or females.

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What I take away from all of this is that:

* Male and female brains are a bit different, but they manage to use different parts of their brains to arrive at similar outcomes,

* Females excel in overall verbal ability, perceptual speed, and fine motor control,

* Males excel in overall spatial ability and (especially) in mathematical or scientific reasoning, and

* After adolescence, Males may be marginally smarter than females (by the equivalent of 2-4 IQ points) in general intelligence, possibly related to the finding that

* Male brains continue to grow for a longer period of time, and achieve overall greater mass.

It's interesting stuff; even more interesting is speculating how it all came about. If we take the standard evolutionary assumption that men were hunters and women were foragers, we might expect to see men with better spatial ability. But women have better perceptual ability, apparently, which is something of a surprise. And wouldn't hunting require good communication between groups of young males? Instead, we see males have a strong advantage on scientific reasoning, as though they convinced the wooly mammoths to lie down and die "for science."

Maybe these differences are more recent in origin, and only came about when men were the ones making business calculations?

Or maybe they are the result of environmental pressures. This works pretty well in some cases, but in others, not so much - maybe girls are socialized to be more sociable, which explains their superior verbal ability, but don't young males make more use of fine motor control with their constant video game playing?

So even though these findings appear consistent across studies, they don't have clear explanations - or at least, they don't have any that are obvious to me. It makes me wonder how much of it really is true, or whether these results are just arising due to recent research techniques.

Do we have any psychologists on PF?

 

I take Chris Rock's view on Affirmative Action: "If a white guy scores better on a test, I don't think I should get the job...but if there's a tie? He had a 200 year head start"

AA should be the tie breaker. But in all other cases, skills/competence/education should rule.

 

It is a fascinating subject, and I wish that I had more time to reply but I'm really busy this week and may have a lot of short responses. Something to notice (also in what you found) was that women tend to perform better with fine motor skills. That's why women almost always have better handwriting, but often struggle figuring out how to hold and swing a bat. I'm not surprised to hear that perceptual skills would be higher among women. A psychologist Warren Farrel in "The Myth of Male power" (at least I think that's the title) discussed how men have always been expendable for the protection of women and children. I figure that in a hunter-gatherer society, a woman would have needed perception more in order to be alerted to danger and be able to protect the young, which would have been the primary goal.

I think a lot of it is true. There are old stories about how men and women think/operate that are largely true. Men have generally been considered better leaders for a lot of reasons involved. Men (as found above) are better with fluid reasoning but, relating to the old stories, men are usually less impulsive with decisions and are more likely in an argument to sit back and say, "okay, let me think about this." (obviously how they deal with an argument has no direct bearing on their decision making, but you can easily see how it would carry over if that old story is true)

 

Meh. The only reason you dont see it is because men are physically more dominant than women.

Back in the day, if she gave you some lip you could just beat the crap out of her. Argument over.

Men own history because of physical aggression. No more than that.,

 

Yeah, but if women were smarter, they would have found a way to circumvent that, wouldn't they?

The truth is that history isn't owned by men because men kept women down. It's owned by men because men are the natural leaders of the species. For all intents and purposes, the only reason women were not treated the same as men throughout most of history was because they were a protected class. They were sheltered from the harshness of the world by rugged men who looked out for them under their natural duty as provider/protector. Women were paid tribute to through the arts and music and were given preferential treatment to ensure their safety. This is why society had such codes as "women and children first."

It was cultural marxism that brainwashed women into viewing protection as oppression. Viewing care as condescension. Viewing femininity as shameful and masculinity as controlling.

 

I don't want to stay where we will be overrun because we have been feminized. That's exactly what happened to the previous inhabitants of Europe when the Indo-Europeans invaded around 2,000 BC.

 

My female Olympic Bronze Medalist Judo teacher would have taken issue that she needed any man to protect her.


Men have been the "natural" leaders of the species for untold history because again, we are the physically dominant side of the species. And in the time and place that our species evolved from neanderthal on upwards, physical dominance secured your place within a tribe. You had better mating opertunities. You got more food. Among many other things. In that time, and that place in human evolution, physical dominance and aggression were what kept you safe. And this has held true for most of humanities history. And in many nations on earth, it still holds true. ( think third world counties where there is no central government to hold things together. Somolia is one good example. )

If women were able to match men in pure physical stature and aggresion, I think you would see a pretty even mix. No one sex would dominate history such as males have.

 

There is also the concept of being the "Power Behind the Throne".

Throughout history, many women, particularly those of above average physical beauty and poise, have used powerful men as a means of becoming powerful themselves, and acting through the male figure head, to achieve all kinds of great, though sometimes illegal and/or unethical things.

Often, these women will have a number of men under their influence, and when the primary, putting his life at risk to achieve her goals, is killed, she switches to the next, and so on...

Some, but by no means all, of these figures, did so for long enough, and amassed enough power and accomplishments, to become historically know as powerful historical figures in their own right.

Others, chose to always remain shadowy and behind the scenes, where they could have the power, but not the exposure, toil, and risks. Sounds pretty smart to me!

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I dont believe in the IQ tests . These tests are designed in accordance with purely personal expectations . This is a kind of type of advertising, an ideal method to exacerbate gender discrimination. If I'm not wrong the first IQ tests performed by Usa scientists(?) and they said 90% of Russians is idiot , %80 of Hungarians is idiot and 80% of Jews is idiot and some other nations Turks etc . So if we accept this tests as true , then more than %80 of Usa people is idiot because today Usa is ruled by Jews those who have %80 idiot people .

 

I.Q. tests are fundamentally flawed.

At one time I.Q. tests were mandatory and I along with my classmates in our Jr. Year of High School all had to take them.

Now I scored ridiculously high on the damn things but I could tell that such tests only were specific to ones analytic capabilities and did not take into account Social I.Q....Emotional I.Q....and other forms of Intelligence.

What really irked me was that there were a few questions where an example was presented and then a person had to choose from a list of 5 answers labeled...a. through e....and I KNEW they were looking for a specific answer but I also knew there was another answer listed that was a better answer but those who devised the test didn't even realize it.

An example of this would be them giving a person a list of words such as...One...Four...Seven...and then ask which would be the best choice to come next?

a. Ten
b. Eleven
c. Eight
d. Twenty Eight
e. Twelve

So let's see who can figure out which number they wanted and which number is a better choice but they didn't want?

AboveAlpha

 

There are smart and dumb people of every sex and race. But there are certainly some things men generally do better than women and vice versa. One need only live life long enough or be in the work force long enough to have enough personal experience. Exceptions don't apply.

For example, women are generally really BAD at managing other women. Also, groups of all men work in a team much better than all women. Its just the way it is. Of course there are exceptions but its not the rule. I've yet to see in almost 20 yrs, a team of ALL women work efficiently without infighting and pointless bickering that gets in the way. Other people's experiences may differ, but thats mine.

This may be politically incorrect, but take any skill or job and a man is almost always the best at it. Not including giving birth of being a mother=) Its just the facts. Like men are generally better hunters and women are better gathers. Its basic genetics.

 

Actually, this is a fair point. And it illustrates the natural differences between masculine and feminine. Whereas masculine power is largely executed through overt domination, feminine power is largely executed through seduction and manipulation. The feminine cannot overpower the masculine by sheer brute strength, but it can get inside its head and hypnotize/brainwash it into laying down arms or doing its bidding. Incidentally, it is important to note that it is in everyone's best interest for masculinity to be eternally vigilant against such weakness. Because historically, civilizations tend to fall when masculinity is in retreat. This is why we're seeing western civilization today beginning to rot from within. It has been systematically castrated, and a creeping feminization is now steadily softening every facet of society; going as far as to insist that our military should be more politically correct than effective.

 

Overall...when all things are equal...which they seldom are but....when two groups of approx. equally educated Men and Women are looked at....Intelligence is about equal but is specific to certain aspects of knowledge and understanding existing in both sexes.

Women tend to have a much higher Emotional and Social Intelligence than Men.

Men tend to have a greater number of Math and Science intelligence specific abilities and Women tend to have a greater Reading and Written Word Memory specific intelligence and interpretation then Men.

A Woman can pick up a book say specific to economics and within a much shorter period of time be able to both comprehend the material as well as memorize it. Men have greater difficulty.

Men on the other hand are much better as far as Spacial and Geometric Representation and Orientation than women and can much easier be able to visualize specific geometry and assign values to it in their heads where as women tend to need to either visually see the geometry either on paper on in reality to be able to have the same ability to assign values to geometric distances and vectors.

Women tend to be able to interpret audio specific to speech and Men tend to be able to interpret facial and physical signing in place of language.

Women also can master the art of understand exactly what another person is referring to in a analogous conversation as Men TOTALLY LACK...or don't care...and don't seem to have the ability or inclination to be able to do this.

AboveAlpha