http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/men-women-and-iq-setting-the-record-straight

We are not "Less Logical" at all. We DO have more social leeway when it comes to expressing emotion.

Men still have the emotions, they just aren't encouraged to show them.

Emotional health and logical ability are not mutually exclusive.

The truth is, no one is really that good at logic. Humans are prone to all sorts of cognitive biases and logical fallacies. That is why the scientific method was developed. It keeps us from lying to ourselves. I think that many of you have fallen victim to confirmation bias.

http://m.xkcd.com/385/

Thank you.

I am one of the logical types. I hate chick flicks. I have never seen The English Patient. Hated Titanic. Despised The Notebook.

And also, I feel really badly for some men who seem to succumb to the pressure of expectation that expressing emotions = weakness. Man, some of you men would be SO much happier and more well-adjusted if you could just really dig in and unpack your baggage and express it. If you felt safe enough to just talk about your emotions.

But I understand. In "The Gift of Fear," Gavin de Becker said that the one thing most men fear the most is that women will laugh at you. (And the one thing women fear most is that one of you will kill us.) I wish I could get everyone to promise not to laugh so you all could embrace and express yourselves openly and honestly. Because the key to creativity, and growth, and innovation is to first become vulnerable. (Brene Brown, TED talk on Shame.)

Most of the posters expressing the "more emotional/less logical" view were careful to state that it was a generalization. I'd be curious to see a study for if it's true for the population at large.

Even if it is, there may well be a causing factor: maybe being raised with those expectations causes it to happen...

And some of us didn't even mention logic.

See the first article, it had a huge sample size. Many other similar studies have been done.

And yes, I know that we humans testing our own logical IQ is rather like rats running themselves though mazes, but it's the best we can do.

Are there any differences between men and women in your view?

I skimmed the article and it sounds like it is mostly talking about IQ or intelligence, not logic.

Nevertheless I think men and women are just as smart as each other, but different in certain ways when it comes to using that intelligence. One thing I have heard claimed in studies, and which I believe, is that men lean towards being more rule oriented, whereas women lean towards being more social oriented. Men get hung up on the particulars and want to stick to them no matter what, whereas women are more willing to change the rules to make things work for the group. This can be good and bad in both ways.

Maybe we need to agree on a definition.

I can even buy that men and women might be more likely to fall for slightly different flavors of hokum, or the we solve problems in slightly different ways. I do not believe, at all, that men are more "Logical", because, well, as far as I understand what logic IS (taking A and B and deriving C and cross checking for accuracy) that WOULD pretty much mean that "men are smarter". It's just a more PC way of saying so.

Riddle me this: If men are more "Rule oriented" or logical, then why the heck is Glenn Beck's audience overwhelmingly male?

Rule oriented sounds kinda like Kohlberg's fourth stage (for men). And social orientation sounds a bit like Kohlberg's third stage. I may be completely off though.

This is a different animal.

I would be interested in the source material. I have not read much on this.

I think Glen Beck relates to a very specific type of personallity. Not to generalize to much, but he has sort of capitalized a people,not just men,who are frightened by our present political situation and are looking for someone or something to blame. while men are the major audience,behind every man is a woman they are trying to indoctrinate with this BS.

Glen Beck is a reincarnation of Cleon Skousen, he attracts the same crowd,frightened people looking for a scapegoat.

Glenn Beck is not stupid. He has an understanding of what he talks about,it is the spin that he puts on it that seems logical.

When he talks about the constituion and economics,it can appeal to someone on a logical and rule oriented level, even if it is wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2013 04:02PM by whiskeytango.

I think he is an intentional huckster.

Men do seem more likely to fall for him though.

Whereas women are more drawn in by the likes of Sylvia Browne. Both people know how to make things "Seem" logical to their audience, after all, everyone likes to think that they believe things for a reason.

But neither of them are logical.

My hypothesis is that men and women ARE taken in by slightly different flavors of hucksterism on average, and with a little help from the "Bias blind Spot" we can choose to see only the situations where the other gender goes wrong.

I think those who may have been a little offended by the previous thread may be making an assumption that basing decisions on logic is always superior to basing decisions on emotions or feelings. I don't think logic is synonymous with intelligence or is tied to level of education.

There are plenty of great things that have happened in the world because someone had a hunch or a feeling. Plenty of successful businesses have been started because someone took a emotional risk with a creative idea. The case could even be made that sometimes logic stifles creativity.

So, I don't think that one is necessarily better than the other. Whether one approaches a situation with logic or approaches it with emotion or feelings is just the way he/she does it.

For the record, I'm not offended, just pedantic.

I believe the claim "Men are more logical than Women" is false, and I have evidence to back it up.

But, you cannot deny the "Flighty emotional Female/logical male" stereotype that has existed for generations, and still continues today.

What is logic? It is the ability to process information and draw conclusions, right? How is this discernible from intelligence? Now, it is true that intelligence is not the end-all be-all, other things like empathy and intuition do matter, but, I simply don't see any real world evidence showing that either gender has a monopoly on any of these things.

Now, are we socially conditioned to express some of them more then others? Youbetcha

Let me ask this, when you are on a forum, such as this, how easy is it to discern the gender of the writer if they don't come out and say it or give obvious cues (like talking about DW and children)? It certainly isn't very easy for me. This indicates, to me, that when freed of social expectations of gender, our minds really are quite similar.

I've seen data that suggests there's no gender gap in logic reasoning, but most peer-reviewed data shows a gap.

For example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045202/table/T2/

That's a fairly poor example though. A study looking at 466 students enrolled in General Chemistry course in a university in Puerto Rico... that's hardly strong evidence, is it?

Ok, fair point.

How about the TOLT, or the GRE?

http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_testtaker_data_rpts.pdf

Table 2, quantitative reasoning scores.

Still rather meaningless, isn't it? Wee pieces of data fished out of the sea. For every item of data you present, I could cite three to contradict it.

My background is in sociology, gender studies and feminist theory. If you really want to discuss this, I'm probably way more prepared to do this than you are.

Just sayin'... ;-)

Ok, cite the other studies. The samples on GRE, ACT, SAT are high.

The reasons could be argued, and I am not suggesting that women aren't as intelligent. I think that logic is a small subset of IQ.

What's the point in citing studies back and forth if the results can be explained away, argued rationally or simply contradict one another? And that's my point. Posting random study results completely out of their context and without appreciating them in the wider social context is meaningless. It tells us nothing. I would even say that it's an exercise in irrationality. ;-)

I took the ACT...didnt do very well....im not a good test taker as i dont do well with timedtests. in college i did avg in the genrral studies but rocked in junior senio grad levels of studies that LOGICALLY proved where all those rules u had to memorize in the 100 level courses. got a B+ in P. chem...arguably most difficult under grad chemistry class. now work as a scientist...n yup last time i checked...female.

Standardized tests do not reflect logic skills...only how fast you can answer questions correctly.

Just my 2¢

I got a 36 overall on the ACT. I have a BS in pure mathematics. I'm a woman.

I think we get crazy in generalizations and stereotypes to the point that people get hurt. Can't people just be people?

I unfortunately, do not. It is one of the tragedies of science, to quote Aronra "The information is already difficult to understand, it shouldn't be difficult to access".

As such, I have to get most of my information from secondary sources.

When I put "Gender differences in logical Reasoning" into Google scholar, this is the only thing I came up with:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/749456?uid=3739928&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102586286651

Which would lead me to think that we do logic in different ways, and it seems boys are better at geometry (spatial reasoning). I could not find anything else as a direct source.

That said, the secondary sources I have encountered do not seem to show any substantial difference in reasoning ability.

You cited one study, could you show a meta analysis showing that more studies come up with a difference than those that do not?

Take a look at ACT, SAT math/science scores between male/female. The same trend applies. The statistics are huge samples too.

http://www.publicagendaarchives.org/charts/sat-scores-gender

Granted, there is a modest, but statistically significant difference in math (men favored) and writing (women favored). However, there is evidence that the gender gap is eliminated in some countries.
http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/women_and_math_the_gender_gap_bridged

Men are more often pushed/encouraged into the math/science direction than women. Raw SAT scores do not tease out the social aspect of the gender disparity.

And you MUST do that before you can say that "Men are more logical on average than Women."

As a female who got a Perfect score (800/800) on the Logic GRE
I am a counter example.

FYI, - I took it along with CS. I thought it was fun and I finished before time was up.

Lets be honest people, women are WAY smarter and more capable than men. Men just have huge ego's that are super sensitive, and women are to nice and don't want to make the little boys, I mean men, feel bad about themselves.

Anyone see Mars Needs Mom's? Hehehehehe I get it.

anonyme Wrote:
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> Lets be honest people, women are WAY smarter and
> more capable than men. Men just have huge ego's
> that are super sensitive, and women are to nice
> and don't want to make the little boys, I mean
> men, feel bad about themselves.


Hahaha. I always wondered why fewer women go into physics and math than men. It's about their empathy for the men's ego. Makes sense! Men in physics are soooo sensitive!

In the US and much of Western Europe (and indeed, the world), women are conditioned to take on the less glamorous, less prestigious, lower paying work. Men are conditioned to avoid the work. The lines are starting to blur, but they have not bled together yet, and even as women Have come into more prestigious positions, labor is still divided much along gendered ljnes.

I'm not claiming that this necessarily accounts for all of the difference, but you cannot ignore the social aspect.

I work in technical support. It is not glamorous by half, but the job does take a lot of reasoning ability. We do all of our hiring and training internally and it is a decent living. My employer is an affirmative action employer, so the end result is women are more or less equally represented in the tech department. Guess what? Our stats are just as good (call back rates and whatnot). Yes, I actually did a full survey of the department on one of our slow months; the stats are made available to everyone. We are also an industry leader in customer support and technical service, so we aren't sucky compared to other companies either.

Jesux of Nazdaq Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> anonyme Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>Men in physics are soooo sensitive!

Maybe just in the U.S.A., and maybe just in generations older than Millennials, and maybe just among WASP/C/M (White, Anglo-Saxon-ish, Protestant/Catholic/Mormon) men, but with these caveats, this is a true (and not at all a sarcastic) statement.

My first tested I.Q. (Stanford-Binet) put me in the top one percentile...subsequent tests at least in the top two percentile. My standard, nationwide achievement exams, were 99+ percentile.

I am a female.

My father was an electronics engineer.

At least somewhat unconsciously, he systematically destroyed my ability to do higher math and physics. Subsequent jobs, where all of the math/science people were male, CONSCIOUSLY destroyed me so far as ANY math/science positions were concerned--though they were very happy to have me employed as a clerk-typist or some other kind of quasi-clerical position.

In one case I was PROMISED that if I passed the exam for Electronics Technicians, I would be promoted to that position. They wouldn't let me take the in-house classes, though. I was given the texts and told to study by myself and then take the exam. I did. I got 100% on the exam. I was then told that I had obviously cheated because there was no way that "a girl" could have EVER passed that final exam without taking the classes.

You better believe that the males of my generation, and the generations which were the adults when I was growing up, were "sensitive" when it comes to math and physics.

You just have NO IDEA what "white male privilege" IS until you are the victim of it.

He he he, not really. Sure men can sit down and solve a math problem. It's when you expect them to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, that problems arise. Why are men always loosing their keys? Because they are unable to find anything, unless it jumps up and bites them. Lets be honest, men are an un efficient, outdated model. RISE UP WOMEN, AND RECOGNIZE! Men are morons!,

Oh brother! Your posts are offensive.

Women's vaginas lead them to thinking through things less often.

However, men, with their penises, always think things through. Because if there's one thing that conjures up a man using solid logic and reason - it's a man and his ding dong.

Hahahahha!!!