Posted on 09/08/2006 6:46:07 PM PDT by presidio9
Men are smarter than women, according to a controversial new study that adds another cinder to the fiery debate over whether gender impacts general intelligence.
"For 100 years there's been a consensus among psychologists that there is no sex difference in intelligence," said J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Recent studies, however, have raised questions about the validity of this claim, he said. One such study showed that men have larger brains than women, a 100 gram difference after correcting for body size. Rushton found similar results in a study of gender and brain size.
To determine if there was a link between gender and intelligence, and perhaps between brain size and intelligence, Rushton and a colleague analyzed the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores from 100,000 17- and 18-year-olds.
G-factor
When Rushton and colleagues weighted each SAT question by an established general intelligence factor called the g-factor, they discovered that males surpassed females by an average of 3.6 IQ points.
The g-factor uses only the tough questions in the test. "If I tell you the last four digits of my telephone number and ask you to repeat them back to me, that's a low g-loaded memory test," Rushton explained. "But if I then ask you to repeat them back to me in the reverse order, that suddenly requires a tremendous amount more cognitive processing. It is a very high loaded g-item.”
So the g-factor "is really the active ingredient of the test," Rushton said. "It's the single best, most predictive part of the test."
Rushton suspects that the results are due to males having more brain tissue than females on average. "It's a very reasonable hypothesis that you just need more brain tissue dedicated to processing high ‘g' information," Rushton said.
The study, which Rushton co-wrote with Douglas Jackson, also of the University of Western Ontario, is detailed in the current issue of the journal Intelligence.
Flawed conclusion
Bruce Bracken, a psychologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, who was not involved in the new study, said he thinks Rushton and Jackson make a convincing argument for the sample they used.
"The difference appears to be real," Bracken said.
But he questions the team's conclusions. "I believe that the differences probably lie in the variables they hadn't considered," Bracken said.
One plausible explanation is that more females than males decide to go to college and thus take the SAT test. The study did in fact include about 10,000 more females than males.
"This suggests that more males are deciding to do something else," Bracken said. "It may be that the males who would not have scored as high on the SAT chose not to take it, and they chose another route."
A more reliable study, he said, would be to match each male with a very similar female and then compare the results.
The debate goes on
The findings add fuel to a still smoldering debate ignited by former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who stated early last year that males have a higher intrinsic aptitude in science and engineering.
In a letter from Summers days after his controversial statements, he wrote: "Despite reports to the contrary, I did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science. As the careers of a great many distinguished women scientists make plain, the human potential to excel in science is not somehow the province of one gender or another.”
While Rushton called his results significant, he doesn't think they are a basis for uprooting the field of education.
"I don't think it has any real implications for education policy or schoolwork," he said. "In fact, females actually get better grades than males.”
Plus, he doesn't think the IQ difference would show up in everyday activities. "For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of jobs, it really doesn't translate into very much," he said.
But when it comes to Nobel Prize winners, he said that men could outnumber women 10-to-1. "Where it will really show up is at the very high end of the distribution," Rushton said.
Rushton has left the door open for opposing views and findings that might contradict his new study.
"I wouldn't say it's the last word. We really do need more research on it before we can be absolutely certain," Rushton said.
I wonder if he has a broadcast license that the Senate Dims can threaten to revoke? They won't like hearing this, and I guess it's okay now for them to retaliate against anyone who says something they don't want to hear.
. Girls don't want to be greasy..of course they CAN..it is feminist nature that makes girls want to prove it!
Feminism has ruined our young women..pretending stupidity in such things was power..proving they could do it..removed the power.
Little boy sat down and cry
Old man stop to ask him why.
He said "I can't do what the big boys do".
Old man sit down and he cry too.
Don't feel bad.
It took me more than a few minutes to remember the spelling, myself....;]
But they can't find their OWN keys, their purse, their belt ...
On the other hand, they can sniff out a shoe sale from an underwater cave in the Aleutians.
Yes, after a few years and being familiar you can still blow it. Just one of those things, I guess...
Aw, women get all the strawberry juice!
#35. Cracked me up.
Hmmmm... most democrats ARE women....
Because policies have changed to spend limited education resources more on girls than boys to even the playing field. It's entirely envy driven. And it's evil.
Excluding government funded employment men earn substantially more than women and the pay gap is now widening, even with women having less children and investing in more education, and with increasing automation and safety in the work place requiring less physical labor. In total women earn 75 cents for every dollar that men earn. The education resource shift towards girls has less return on investment and even more of an impact on tax revenues that fund schools.
There are many extremely intelligent women that outperform most or even all men. They should be given every educational equal opportunity they desire. With the invention of reliable birth control though they no longer are having many children, instead focusing on careers. They will be bred out fairly quickly. Female intelligence has become a self-limiting genetic/cultural trait that is unsustainable.
Madam Marie Curie in the early 1900s had two daughters. Her offspring didn't have any children that I could find. End of the line.
You have a point, but males are simply not performing, and that pay gap will erode in time. It is a very disturbing trend. It needs frankly more attention than this terrorists are going to kill us all, concern. They may, but I am more concerned about other matters.
That's the feminist plan however government stats are showing the reverse. I agree the gap should eventually narrow however it will be because men's earnings drop, not that women's will gain. It's more important to the envious that others fail than it is to win.
You have a point, that to some more of a leveling, with a lower base line, is better than a less of a leveling with a higher base line. That has been an object of discussion and debate since about the time rocks cooled, as it were. In general, leveling has lost cachet, except maybe when it comes to gender politics. I dislike gender politics. I find it degrading.
Men are better at conceptualization, this is why the majority of artists are men. Women are better at socialization, this is why they stay out of jail. Really, there are no strictly male nor female save mongrels. The best of humanity fuses itself with the opposite in marriage, and a new creature is birthed. Forgive the Biblical lingo.
Oh gosh! I forgot to add in my earlier post that I don't think that women should be allowed to vote, not because they are stupid as such, but rather that they fall for Gore and Clinton types, perhaps seeing these collectivists as soap opera characters. Was it Andrew Jackson who rescinded the prohibition against people without property being allowed to vote?
But women have nicer tits.
"evolutionary pressure has tought him to keep his mouth firmly shut"
There's nothing Darwinian about a knee to the groin...
The map is not the territory -- Alfred Korzybski
Great article, stating the obvious.
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