How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence 928
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."
Variance is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IQ testing is bad testing (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Variance is the key (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They believe it because it's true (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Extroverted people are rated as 'smarter' (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno about that (Score:2, Interesting)
So, in my family its evenly matched (and perhaps actually stacked in favor of the women). However, that's just one more anecdote and not a real data point.
Re:Well, Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
Physically women will never be equal to men. It's in out genes to be able to bulk up more..
That may be genetic selection due to culture. Men don't choose women who are bigger than they are and women don't date short men.
Bold = Smart (Score:5, Interesting)
self-esteem, estrogen, and testosterone /drive (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to wonder how much a person's self-esteem has to do with their self-perception. I usually don't think that people with externally-visible low self-esteem are terribly bright. People who are unable to address and/or deal with their inner troubles, for instance, get a very low rating with me. More commonly than not, these "frail" people tend to be women, in my experience (though there are certainly some strong ones). Kinda interesting looking at these observations in writing, and thinking back to how things "used to be" where women were considered the weaker sex - not as mentally bright, not as intrepid, etc. (Contrary to the status quo belief of the 'sexism' of yore, the 'weakness' of women was generally considered to be mental/emotional, not physical.)
Also, testosterone (resulting in an more forward inner drive) probably has something to do with it, I imagine. If someone is driven, they are more likely to manifest their dreams, or to even have those dreams. From what I've seen, guys with more testosterone are not only more extroverted and have higher self-esteem, but also tend to accomplish more than their peers if they're the least bit intelligent.
I've got two children - a daughter, 3, and a son, 6. I don't think my son is more intelligent than my daughter, and don't necessarily think the inverse is true, either. I'm unsure due to age and gender related development. I do know that my daughter tends to learn better: she listens more carefully, and is generally more attentive to what's being told to her. But she's also nowhere near as headstrong or driven as my son, either.
Re:They believe it because it's true (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are important pioneers, I'm not sure it's a particularly large number--- you've right there, with your 2-entry list, basically exhausted the list of prominent female pioneers of geekdom, while the equivalent male list (Alan Turing, Steve Wozniak, Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, ...) goes on for a while longer. Sure, there a few others once you move down the list into "famous among specialists"--- Radia Perlman (inventor of the spanning-tree protocol), say. But you can't even put together a list of 20 without digging pretty deep [wikipedia.org].
Re:I think (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Her conclusion was that there is a dual outcome of this - not only do men present themselves as more qualified and more autonomous than women, they also appear more confident.
Overall, I remember thinking that women were more accurate in their descriptions, which is nicer, but counterproductive in context.
Re:They believe it because it's true (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well (Score:2, Interesting)
One possibility is that men really are smarter, just that IQ tests don't measure the most important aspects of intelligence.
Fundamentally the question cannot be answered as long as we cling to preconceived notions of what it means to be a man or a woman. "Man" is a social construct -- and from a scientific perspective there is no clear way to deliniate(sp?) between male and female. You can claim genetics determines that, and I'll show you XX men and XY women. You claim genitalia, I'll reply with birth defects. Any such distinction is arbitrary, and claims to the contrary are unscientific. The either/or proposition of gender and sex are social constructs. I'd also like to remind you that there are no studies proving that intelligence has any survival advantage whatsoever.
Our entire civilization exists because of bright men...
No, it doesn't. Civilization exists because of a pair of genetic mutations that greatly increased the folds (surface area) of the brain and a refinement of our tongues, which allowed us to develop language. Technology exists because we have the ability to communicate knowledge of our environment more efficiently, and remember that knowledge for longer periods, than any other animal. We couldn't have evolved if we couldn't speak to each other, or put another way: Logic and reason presuppose, at their origin, emotion. Lab rats do smarter things than people in many situations -- and if monkeys could speak in words (instead of merely understand them), we'd probably be quite humbled by how much less of a difference there really is.
But I can make this a whole lot simpler with a Douglas Adams quote: We've always thought we were smarter than dolphins because we built cities and live in them, whereas the dolphins think they're smarter for the same reason. You think civilization exist because of bright men -- I'd argue it's more accurate to say that men engage in risk-taking behavior more often, and statistically that's going to eventually lead to a beneficial discovery (which society then commits to the collective memory). Of course, this behavior more often leads to horrible failure -- and that's okay. Because from an evolutionary standpoint, men are disposable: they fight and die in wars, experiments gone wrong, and more -- as long as the women survive, society rebuilds and we raise another generation of risk-taking men. Women don't take risks as often as men do, because that behavior risks the future of the human race, ie. the children. Intelligence has nothing to do with any potential benefits from how men and women think: It's how they act that determines the outcome.
Ironically, civilized trappings such as feminism and political correctness are only possible at all due to technology.
Feminism, if we define it as advocating equal social/legal protection and rights for women, has been around since before you had the technology to write such sexist scribes on public forums. Historically, societies which have greater equality between various groups (men, women, gays, blacks, slaves, whatever) has occurred during periods of economic and material prosperity. As resources diminish, competition increases and society favors characteristics that give individuals a greater portion of those limited resources. During periods of scarcity, civilization dissolves into "thog smash head with rock, take food." Women can't compete with men on physical strength. Intelligence has nothing to do with that difference.
Anyways, as far as I know, men have done around 95-99% of the inventing. Correct me if I'm wrong.
History also says Columbus discovered America, nevermind that there were millions of native americans here first. History is written by the dominant society. Just last week I was at the Mall of America and there is a statue there honoring 9/11 -- and it claimed that it was "the single largest loss of life on US soil." That's a lie -- I'm s
Re:Well, Duh (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Some of it is not purely cultural, but the kind of culture that gets created by small practicalities. (Which is why it occurs across many cultures). There is still, in pretty much every culture, a greater proportion of men who chose to define themselves by their work than women who do so. At least in the West, this isn't primarily through lack of choice for women, but through lack of choice for men. Sorry, men, but we are neither physically equipped for childbirth nor breastfeeding -- and after that stage if you choose to be a househusband the inevitable question "why don't you just use childcare if the mum's not going to be with the children anyway" is going to be rattling around your head and those around you. (And if you bottle-feed, well then you're already labelled as evil.) While societies are reasonably open minded now about whether a woman prioritises her career or children, we are not "open-minded" about the idea of a man not having a career -- because men do not have the excuse of babies. We have a single defined stereotype of what a man should be -- career-focused, intelligent, out conquering the world... for girls though we let the child decide.
This has a few inevitable consequences. If workforce participation is higher for men, then aggregated across both the working and the non-working population, men will be seen as picking up more new technologies (in the line of work), have more motivation for updating their technical skills, and thus be seen as "in general" more intelligent. Except of course it's not, it's just "more of them are active in the workforce". Meanwhile, as parents we are more motivated to push our sons than our daughters. Our sons have to achieve; our daughters can merely choose to. And so, even straight after birth both mothers and fathers tend to encourage baby boys to be lively, and tend to calm baby girls. (Yup, they've done the controlled study on that one, including boys dressed up as girls etc.)
The upshot of which is even if you are in a culture that is "liberal to women", many of the same discrepancies still occur because there are no cultures which are "liberal to men".
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:They believe it because it's true (Score:1, Interesting)
So yes, religious people are beasts. It's a shame they continue to run on the inertia of past human ignorance. In any sane society they'd all be rounded up and turned into Soylent Green.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Intelligence is over-rated (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason there's 6 billion people on the planet instead of a few hundred million is because of technology. Intelligence developed technology - therefore it has an enormous survival advantage on the macroscale.
The reason we can talk so much to each other is because of technology.
"Maleness" is a brain that develops and is modified by testosterone, resulting in increased risk taking behavior and improved mapping functions and possible a whole host of subtler changes.
Due to technology, physical strength matters an enormous amount less. Hence women are now being valued more, because nearly all jobs don't need as much physical strength.
"Equal protection", statistics, discrimination suits - none of this would be possible without technology.
Re:Extroverted people are rated as 'smarter' (Score:4, Interesting)
The context of the perceived "extroversion" is important, I think. I'm very very introverted in most contexts. I prefer to not speak. However, in the context of a classroom in which mainly cerebral, external knowledge is the topic of conversation, I tend to be quite participatory, far surpassing verbally those normally extroverted people(particularly females).
Re:Variance is the key (Score:3, Interesting)
This is likely true. Numerous studies have shown that women have a very average distribution of intelligence, while men are alternately either very smart, or very stupid, with far fewer in the middle.
Their reasoning is wrong.
Current scientific consensus is that it's attributable to genetic differences. Specifically, men's genetic makeup is one of brinksmanship... They'll either be very good, or a spectacular failure. Hence high rates of men in jails, AND in top executive positions...
I recomend "Is there anything good about men?"
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm [fsu.edu]
Re:Well, Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
Or as a Biologist would say: Sexual dimorphism in primates is a result of dominant male reproductive success. However, your statement does have a certain pithiness.
Interestingly, species which share child-rearing have less difference between males and females. It will be interesting to see what happens to humans over the next 10 or so generations as physical strength becomes less important and women achieve more equal status.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
The female corollary is the preference for guys who are assholes: the dismissive treatment is a social signal of higher status, which is desirable.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IQ != Intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
While you might argue that this isn't a valid metric, Sanford/Binet IQ testing almost exactly coorilates with income in virtually all social strata. It also almost exactly coorilates with education completed and on average, with grades on almost all different sorts of standardized evaluations across dieverse spectrums of age, race, gender and backgrounds.
It almost exactly coorilates with success at higher math and with success in many "core" persuits, such as engineering, science, architecture, art and music.
The concept of "multiple intelligences" is probably accurate to some limited extent, but what does it measure? I don't think it's simple irony or happenstance that all NFL quarterbacks are in the top 5% of intelligence on standardized IQ tests, as are the majority of star hockey players. They may "also" rank in the top 1% for the "physical IQ" as defined by the "multiple" theory, but the standarized Binet testing measures a combination of mathematical, linguistic, spatial, logical and even interpersonal.
While someone may have an "aptitude" in many of the various "multiple" intelligence areas defined by the theory, someone who scores very high on Binet testing is likely to have a very high aptitude in MULTIPLE of these categories.
The best horticulture expert I know... can grow anythingg, anywhere, and just has a "sense" about that stuff might score high on the wacky sounding "naturalist" area of the multiple-iq theory... just happens to score in the 150s on a Binet test. I don't find this ironic.
I know plenty of people who are very "in touch" with nature and love growing things... but frankly, they aren't that good at the actual activity of doing it at it because they have a poor sense of spcial logic and mathematical reasoning and an "average" short term memory, etc, etc... which all impacts their ability to be teh best at whatever their chosen "expertise" is.
In all, I fiew the "multiple IQ" theory as a simple subset of intelligence. To say someone is brilliant on the "naturalist" or even "physical" scale of the theory only takes them so far, after which, they could go much further with a combination of many traits...... which is what the "simple" IQ testing sets out to accomplish.
Sure, it's a blunt instrument, but it's HIGHLY relevant to what our society (and many other societies) view as "success" in life.
Women would rather work? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Women would rather work? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a difference between having one child, for the experience, and three children, to ensure the continued expansion of your people group. The statistics say that women in developed nations are mostly having a child for the experience.
And, I'm not sure what world YOU live in if you think that having children AND a career is part of the ideal world. My ideal world is completely narcissitic, self-centered, and involves lots of nubile young women who never get pregnant. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, my world isn't even close to my ideal. You need to get rid of the Ms. magazines from your house and start fantasizing like a MAN.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't worry, it's true, smart men appreciate smart women, it's just that smart women tend to adopt a more defensive, cynical distant attitude while dumb ones tend to be too friendly for their own good, but that makes them more approachable.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
"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?
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
I think many regular people avoid smart people for various reasons, mostly not knowing what they are getting themselves into. Well, smarter people have numerous other problems, like higher risks for alcoholism.
I have found the smart girls that I've dated had more emotional problems then the dumber ones. Well, the worst emotional problems came with girls who weren't very smart but tried to succeed in careers that required significant intelligence, but ignoring those outliers the smart ones had more emotional troubles. Or maybe I just tolerate more emotional issues from women who are smart.
I'd say all these issues apply equally for both genders, with the one caveat that some smarter males that use their intelligence to get rich, which then overrides any concerns about personality problems for many many women.
Re:If women are so smart . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Women have a plethora of birth control choices; pills, IUDs, implants, the list goes on. Men have only three:
Really fair, ain't it?
If she gets pregnant, she can choose to abort or give birth, and the man has no say. He may be adamantly opposed to abortion and feel that his child is being murdered and the fetus will still be aborted. He may wish an abortion but it's her call, not his. He can't force an abortion or birth of HIS child.
If she chooses birth, the man pays for the next 18 years, even if he's denied contact with the child that he was tricked into fathering in the first place.
In many states, you are reponsible for any children your wife has after you marry her, even if you're not the biological father. There is no penalty whatever for adultery.
Isn't it time for men to have some reproductive rights? We have none whatever.