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Comments:
raymond - 2005-01-22 10:03:21 It's hard to imagine why anyone would think that would be funny or clever. The theme of the party was "colonialism," which in itself is asking for trouble. The whole thing was very ill-conceived. I've never understood the Diana worship. She was just a person like any other. * * * * * * * * * * * * LF - 2005-01-22 15:04:00 Yeah, rotating objects in one's head is just a cheap parlor trick. As an undergrad, I used to do it at parties, trying to impress the ladies. It didn't seem to ever work, though. As for innate perceptual/intelectual differences, they absolutely do exist, no matter what some PC jackasses want everyone to believe. I'm thankful for the differences. Do we want both sexes to think completely alike?* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2005-01-22 21:30:17 Laura, I usually agree with you, but here I have to beg to differ. First, mental rotation is supposed to be related to mathematical ability, but all we know is that men do better at math after a certain age, and that they are also better at mental rotation. The logic is then, that those two things must be related. However, what if socialization accounts for one result, and innate skill counts for the other? Second, the differences in things like spatial ability and mental rotation are *very small* relative to the huge differences in the number of men versus women who achieve tenure at institutions like, for example, Yale. Also, women *are* better at *some* spatial tasks (e.g., configurations), yet, somehow that gets lost in the furor over mental rotation. Who is to say that mental rotation ability is more fundemental to mathematical ability than other types of spatial skills? Third, women blow men out of the water when it comes to verbal ability. The differences arise very early (i.e., infancy) and are fairly large, relative to the differences in spatial ability and even math achievement. Yet, men still hold the majority of the prestigious positions in journalism, English and other fields that rely heavily on verbal skills. If innate ability explains women's lack of achievement in math and science, then women should be overwhelmingly running the show when it comes to other jobs where verbal skills are important (i.e., almost all jobs other than engineering and math). Finally, female university faculty do publish less, *but* if you look at the "impact factor" of the articles that they do publish, they consistently publish papers that are more important -- that is, they are read and cited than mens' on average. So, to say that women in academe don't do as well because of child-rearing simply isn't true -- their type of accomplishments just aren't as recognised because they don't pump out small unimportant paper after small unimportant paper. Personally, I'd rather publish fewer papers and have people really care about them, than to publish vitae-fillers. Anyway, the president of Harvard is welcome to his opinion, but as the president of arguably the most prestigious university in the world, he would do well to at least have his facts straight.* * * * * * * * * * * * Sean Duffy - 2005-01-23 12:57:09 I actually have been involved in several of these studies on mental rotation...I'm an experimental psychologist. I don't believe that the mental rotation issue has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the differences between men and women's math acheivement. There simply is no evidence for this, and very little evidence that this is a truly innate difference. In one unpublished study I did, I studied women who played basketball versus didn't on mental rotation. This was to determine whether training on throwing might influence spatial competences. I didn't care about basketball. The women who played basketball performed equal to men in rotating, leading me to believe that the kinds of activities that men and women engage in, on average, lead to different spatial competencies. It never was published because someone reviewed it and said that I didn't control for hormones - it could be the case that the basketball players had higher levels of testosterone. This is a possibility, and I didn't care enough about it to redo the study because I then did a metaanalysis on 200 papers reporting sex differences in spatial tasks. The largest difference in this literature is about a standard deviation, meaning in a Bayesian sense, that if you have a person whose gender you don't know, but you do know their spatial rotation score, you have about a 16 % chance of guessing the person's gender according to that score. And when you do a metaanalysis on the studies you find that the average difference across all tasks that show such differences is about .1 standard deviations - this meaning statistically that the distributions for men and women basically overlap, and this is a lot of hype about absolutely nothing. It pisses me off that the people at harvard - especially the ridiculous nativists like steve pinker who probably rubs elbows with the president would still be harping on these differences that don't even exist. And to claim they are related to later abilities? It is stupid. I agree with Anna. * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-23 15:19:53 LF: I'm impressed. You could say bowled over. :)* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-23 15:29:17 Anna: that is a thoughtful comment. I welcome disagreement, especially if it's as thought-out as your points are. There is a crucial distinction to be made here between alleged gender differences and the impact of a sexist society. You note, as I've read before, that women generally excel over men in verbal skills. In this, you are essentially agreeing with the Harvard president's position that such differences do exist. No one denies that outdated sexist societal attitudes persist to some degree and keep women from dominating journalism, &c. Great strides have been made since the 50s and are ongoing, though.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-23 15:37:04 Mr. Duffy: your comment is a valuable perspective from an expert in the field; thank you. It is a thought-provoking point that the activities men and women engage in may influence their spatial competencies. This implies that these so-called innate abilities are to some degree malleable. It is also worthwhile to learn that these differences are apparently much smaller than is hyped. In all, a very thoughtful comment.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2005-01-23 17:35:12 Err.. I'm rather fond of Steve Pinker, but other than that, well said, Sean.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-23 17:51:32 It was indeed well said. And Ypsidixit is also a Pinker fan, based, admittedly, only on various tidbits scraped from NPR, and not from actually reading any of his works. He's handing down the Chomsky legacy--that's good enough for me.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2005-01-23 17:51:42 Laura, I meant to add that as a neuroscientist, I would never claim that men and women are exactly the same; they simply aren't. There are a host of differences in the male and female brain throughout the lifespan, starting at birth and ending at death. We just don't know for sure that the male brain is better suited for math. It may be that it is, but I have yet to see any clear evidence other than math achievement, for that idea (circular: Why are men better at math? Because men have better innate ability. We know that because they are better at math.) The evidence for sex differences in verbal ability is a bit more clear, i.e. differences arise at infancy, female infants recognise verbal uttences earlier, girls learn to talk earlier, learn to read earlier, are less likely to be dyslexic, and are less likely to lose speech after a stroke to one hemisphere, plus develop bigger vocabularies and read faster. Anyway, I still think that nuture has a way of taking very tiny nature differences and exaggerating them over development, and that there are more abilities that are shared across the sexes than that differ between them.* * * * * * * * * * * * Sean Duffy - 2005-01-23 18:12:09 Well, Pinker is okay in my book because he is doing what no psychologist is doing - making psychology interesting to the masses. However, his message of strong nativism is somewhat unrealistic in my view (as are many of the views of Spelke and Carey and Hauser and the other psychologists of the Harvard School). And I'm sorry to say, Chomsky, whose claims for a lack of individual differences in syntactic competence is somewhat exaggerated in my book (you have to look at the extremes of syntax - such as recursive devices - to exhibit marked individual differences and effects of input.) But it seems like the genome simply doesn't have enough information in it to encode what is known as "core knowledge." Let alone cognitive processes that vary across genders or cultures. The question, after all, could be posed as to why Asians score better than American men or women? Maybe Harvard should go to Tokyo and Shanghai to find its students. My true thoughts about sex differences in spatial abilities like rotation is that they have a biological basis - but that basis is not one that is evolutionarily adaptive. Women's brains are bathed in estrogen and men's in testosterone. There are in the brain many receptors for each kind of hormone - which is why when a man is castrated he loses sexual urges. Brains bathed in estrogen or testosterone may do very different things. Testosterone may bind onto receptors for certain spatial reasoning skills, and might increase accuracy and reaction time in performing such tasks. But that doesn't mean that women can't learn to do these tasks just as well and if not, better, than men with training. Think of it this way - what is the adaptive value of baldness, or acne? They are secondary developments from a primary biological process - the maturation of the sex organs. You can't say that baldness is adaptive directly (take it from me - I don't think that when I go in the shower and see all that hair in the drain) - yet it is a necessary secondary characteristic that exists because the adaptive value of having sexual organs is higher than the adaptive value of having hair on your head. So these sex differences in these low level competencies (and these are very low level abilities that are far different than sex differences in acheivement in say algebra) may seem be evolutionary designs, but they are not. And it is easy to come up with a story for them - like that men in evolutionary time chucked spears and women gathered berries. Yet there is little anthropological evidence for these differences, and very little association regarding why it should be the case that mental rotation, say, is more important than spatial navigation in hunting versus gathering. The inequalities though in math performance most likely arise from social expectations and stereotype threat - processes that exist at a much higher level of psychological functioning. Women are not expected to do as well in math as men, and you can make women do WORSE simply by telling them (priming them) that they are a woman. (This is work by Claude Steele and colleagues at Stanford). You can make women's performance be the SAME as men by telling them that this is a test that women do well in. The same is true for asians - telling them that they are asian makes them better at these tests. This says more about the tests themselves than it does about the people taking them, I think. In the end, these are all very interesting questions to think about and I am enjoying reading your blog for all the interesting insights you pose. * * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-23 18:33:00 And this fellow reader is enjoying your appearance on the scene.....would you describe how a test could tap into and influence a person's confidence in herself?* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 08:28:58 Anna: I think that "nuture has a way of taking very tiny nature differences and exaggerating them over development, and that there are more abilities that are shared across the sexes than that differ between them" is well put--that seems reasonable.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 08:41:27 That is a very interesting point, Mr. Duffy: that such differences may be "secondary developments from a primary biological process," like your examples of baldness and acne. Also, in addition to the societal influence of gender expectations on a test-taker, you point out another factor that may be further skewing the data: the test-giver's expectations of the test-taker, which probably has an influence regardless of gender ("men don't do too well on this test...women do very well on section 3 of this test...") Thank you for your kind comment about reading the blog...but it's thought-provoking expert insights such as yours that make it interesting.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 08:45:19 Addiann, just my two cents; I imagine the expectations of the test-giver could have an influence, especially if it's someone the test-taker admires and looks up to, and there's always some chance of the wording of the questions themselves exerting a subtle influence, if, say, characters in story problems reinforce traditional gender roles or portray women as weak at some skill that is also being tested for. Now, that's a far shot now, but didn't used to be, and I still see lots of bad tests out there (speaking as someone who took a class at EMU on how to write tests, which was surprisingly interesting). It's very easy to mess up a test and write a bad one.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2005-01-24 09:43:51 One of my colleagues has some astounding data that shows that when you prime people with the concept "old", they actually walk down the hall more slowly afterward!* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 09:45:39 That's astounding. But with hopeful implications, if one keeps a bouncy, upbeat outlook in general.* * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-24 10:39:25 Yes, I'm well familiar with the power of suggestion. The medical school here hires actors to be "patients" for students learning how to interview. They provide us with material describing the symptoms of a particular disease, some personalty details, age, occupational status, etcetera, and we're on our own with them during recording sessions, one after another of them, 15 minutes at a time. I came away from a week of it actually experiencing the symptoms and finally declined the gigs because they were too depressing. Although admittedly, getting that far into a character makes for better acting, I prefer to take it to the stage.....On the testing issue, I was just wondering if Mr. Duffy would provide more specificity to his statement. * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 10:42:48 That is fascinating, Addiann--that you actually experienced the real symptoms! The implications of that phenomenon of experiencing symptoms are many, and it makes me wonder why that hasn't been studied, unless that falls under the "biofeedback" rubric.* * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-24 10:57:23 well, not totally unusual for actors would be my guess. We need to produce tears, rage, tenderness, and so forth, at will, and one way to get there is auto suggestion via sense memory (one way to put it). And actually, the medical school symptoms, irritable bowel, in my case, can be given to one's self quite readily. I did it to myself in the last show I did, and barely made it through a performance. But that's another story. * * * * * * * * * * * * Sean Duffy - 2005-01-24 14:05:25 Please, call me Sean. I'm only 28! The walking slow experiment was originally done by John Bargh at Yale. Here is the citation: Bargh, J.S., Chen, M. & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effect of trait construct and sterotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230-244. You can download it here: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jab257/publications.htm If you want to know more about the notion of stereotype threat - how the test taker's expectations of his own performance and competence influences behavior, you should check out Claude Steele's work. Here is a page about him - although I don't know that there are any links to articles. http://steele.socialpsychology.org/ Better to hear it from the horse's mouth than from mine! * * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-24 15:32:50 thanks, Sean, I think you've gone a long way toward telling me the 'what' with "stereotype threat". In other words, folks think themselves into a particular stereotypical box, and their behavior then echos that group? (Where is Albert Ellis when you need him!) * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-24 19:43:29 The idea of "stereotype threat" is fascinating, and implies that people with high self-esteem perform better than people of equal capabilities but with low self-esteem. It also implies that you should hang out with people who build you up, not criticize you every step of the way. Sean, thank you for digging up that link. I would love to read that paper, but I can't download pdfs unfortunately (old system software no longer supports latest version of Acrobat). But if anyone else does read it, I'd be most grateful if you'd kindly copy and paste the text here into "comments." * * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-24 20:20:38 Yes, positive regard seems to be the difference. Enough of it to influence behavior. Doesn't sound like this part of psychology has changed much since the 70s. * * * * * * * * * * * * Sean Duffy - 2005-01-24 23:26:44 Where is Albert Ellis when you need him? Apparently you can ask him yourself. He is still alive, which shocks me. He apparentlu answers questions posed on his site - but I'd do it sooner than later...the dude is old! http://www.rebt.org/dr/askdrellis.htm* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-25 09:45:58 Thanks to Addiann, Ypsidixit removed one more crumb of ignorance from her brain: "Albert Ellis (born September 27, 1913) is a psychologist who is the originator of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT); the theory being one's intermost thoughts control one's feelings. The positive modification of these thoughts can bring about improvement. This is the foundation of cognitive therapy." More.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-25 09:47:38 Rather amazing link you dug up, Sean; thanks for posting it.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-01-25 09:52:08 Ellis's discussion of the limitations of free will, on the page Sean pointed out, is pretty interesting and thought-provoking. And kudos to Ellis for hopping online, at age 92 no less, and maintaining a conversation.* * * * * * * * * * * * addiann - 2005-01-25 11:51:06 WOW! this is amazing! I really did think he was dead by now. Ellis's ideas really spoke to me (more than 30 years ago) and resulted in life-changing thinking. One of my heroes, next to Matisse and Shakespeare.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2005-01-25 14:17:25 Err... guess I've been outed.* * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |