Female vs Male Psychology

[Toni]

And yet, I was the best math student in my high school. By quite a lot. My sister is also quite good at math--better than I am because she likes it more.

There is no math in school, especially in US. And it is a mistake to draw conclusions from individual examples.[/quote ]

Well, I'm just a girl so what would I know?

Aside from the fact that it is unwise and unproductive to try to judge an individual's abilities and potential by a statistical average.

Oh and it's always interesting to meet 'experts' on the Internet.

 

[barbos]

LOL, power of google search. You can literally find anything. Unfortunately sometimes what you find is bullshit.

It's not bullshit because you say so.

Yes. it's other way around. I say it is bullshit because it is bullshit.

I support my claim that choice of career is not that rigid, and that culture plays a part in shaping personality and character. It's your claim that career options are so narrow for individuals that someone who happens to choose nursing (as if that's genetically determined) is literally incapable of doing an engineering degree that is absurd.

I never said anything about it being narrow. I's pretty wide within respective clusters.
Name one engineer who has a nursing degree, and no, biomedical engineering is not engineering. Engineering in the usual meaning of the word.

 

[barbos]

There is no math in school, especially in US. And it is a mistake to draw conclusions from individual examples.[/quote ]

Well, I'm just a girl so what would I know?

Yes, girls can be idiots too, one of the idiots in the video was a woman, and she even had a degree it seems. So anyone can be an idiot even Norwegian scientist, not to mention girls who were best at "math" in high school.

Aside from the fact that it is unwise and unproductive to try to judge an individual's abilities and potential by a statistical average.

And who exactly is doing that here?

Oh and it's always interesting to meet 'experts' on the Internet.

And it's always interesting to meet girls who were best at "math" in high school.

 

[DBT]

It's not bullshit because you say so.

Yes. it's other way around. I say it is bullshit because it is bullshit.

Regardless of what you say or claim, you are wrong.

That ourculture shapes our thoughts, personalities and expectations is not even controversial.

I think you've built a strawman.

''The term culture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, ideas, behaviors, and traditions of a particular society that are passed through generations. Culture is transmitted to people through language as well as through the modeling of behavior, and it defines which traits and behaviors are considered important, desirable, or undesirable.''

''Within a culture there are norms and behavioral expectations. These cultural norms can dictate which personality traits are considered important. The researcher Gordon Allport considered culture to be an important influence on traits and defined common traits as those that are recognized within a culture. These traits may vary from culture to culture based on differing values, needs, and beliefs. Positive and negative traits can be determined by cultural expectations: what is considered a positive trait in one culture may be considered negative in another, thus resulting in different expressions of personality across cultures.''

I never said anything about it being narrow. I's pretty wide within respective clusters.
Name one engineer who has a nursing degree, and no, biomedical engineering is not engineering. Engineering in the usual meaning of the word.

In fact you are claiming that it is narrow. You implied as much when you said ''Name one registered nurse who switched to engineering'' - which is a cheap ploy because this is information not readily available.

Which implies that people who are attracted to nursing are not capable of getting an engineering degree.

Which in turn is bullshit.

There is talk along these lines, for example;

''DIdnt know where to post this question. I am a Mechanical engineer by degree but work in the aerospace field for the past 7 years. I have been thinking of goign back to school for a career change and would love to go into obgyn nursing. Anyone out there who has made the career change from engineering to nursing? How did nursing school compare to engineering school? How did your engineering background help/ or not help you in nursing school or in your nursing career? Thanks!''


''...but we have three women in our class at Duke that left some sort of engineering to attend our ABSN program - we have 2 former biomedical engineers and a former - literally - rocket scientist; she used to build solid rocket boosters for the US military.

They're all brilliant women and are very interesting to talk to. I can't speak from experience here, but I guess what I'm doing is saying you're not alone and it can be done. Good luck and let us know when and where you apply!''

 

[barbos]

DBT, I am sorry I don't read posts these who did not watch that video.

 

[DBT]

DBT, I am sorry I don't read posts these who did not watch that video.

You have until now, but suddenly it has become an inconvenient thing to do?

 

[barbos]

DBT, I am sorry I don't read posts these who did not watch that video.

You have until now, but suddenly it has become an inconvenient thing to do?

I assumed everybody watched it. It's really good video. But yes, it's inconvenient to reply to nonsense which was answered in the video. I think you know you are wrong and probably watched the the video, but choose to be annoying and difficult, your choice.

 

[Juma]

You have until now, but suddenly it has become an inconvenient thing to do?

I assumed everybody watched it. It's really good video. But yes, it's inconvenient to reply to nonsense which was answered in the video. I think you know you are wrong and probably watched the the video, but choose to be annoying and difficult, your choice.

A video is not a valid argument/post. Enter your argument in text or STFU.

 

[barbos]

I assumed everybody watched it. It's really good video. But yes, it's inconvenient to reply to nonsense which was answered in the video. I think you know you are wrong and probably watched the the video, but choose to be annoying and difficult, your choice.

A video is not a valid argument/post. Enter your argument in text or STFU.

Video contains arguments and I have entered my arguments already, so STFU yourself.

 

[Will Wiley]

Thought it'd make for an interesting thread to compare and contrast the nature of men and women.

- are men and women actually different?
- if so how?

.

Apparently men have a better sense of direction, according to a recent study
Men have better sense of direction than women

It's been well established that men perform better than women when it comes to specific spatial tasks. But how much of that is linked to sex hormones versus cultural conditioning and other factors?

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to explore this idea by administering testosterone to women and testing how they performed in wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment.

Using fMRI, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study.

But when women got a drop of testosterone under their tongue, several of them were able to orient themselves better in the four cardinal directions.

Marked effects of intracranial volume correction methods on sex differences in neuroanatomical structures: a HUNT MRI study

Abstract
To date, there is no consensus whether sexual dimorphism in the size of neuroanatomical structures exists, or if such differences are caused by choice of intracranial volume (ICV) correction method. When investigating volume differences in neuroanatomical structures, corrections for variation in ICV are used. Commonly applied methods are the ICV-proportions, ICV-residuals and ICV as a covariate of no interest, ANCOVA. However, these different methods give contradictory results with regard to presence of sex differences. Our aims were to investigate presence of sexual dimorphism in 18 neuroanatomical volumes unrelated to ICV-differences by using a large ICV-matched subsample of 304 men and women from the HUNT-MRI general population study, and further to demonstrate in the entire sample of 966 healthy subjects, which of the ICV-correction methods gave results similar to the ICV-matched subsample. In addition, sex-specific subsamples were created to investigate whether differences were an effect of head size or sex. Most sex differences were related to volume scaling with ICV, independent of sex. Sex differences were detected in a few structures; amygdala, cerebellar cortex, and 3rd ventricle were larger in men, but the effect sizes were small. The residuals and ANCOVA methods were most effective at removing the effects of ICV. The proportions method suffered from systematic errors due to lack of proportionality between ICV and neuroanatomical volumes, leading to systematic mis-assignment of structures as either larger or smaller than their actual size. Adding additional sexual dimorphic covariates to the ANCOVA gave opposite results of those obtained in the ICV-matched subsample or with the residuals method. The findings in the current study explain some of the considerable variation in the literature on sexual dimorphisms in neuroanatomical volumes. In conclusion, sex plays a minor role for neuroanatomical volume differences; most differences are related to ICV.

 

[Will Wiley]

And for those who watch videos

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg[/YOUTUBE]

 

[barbos]

And for those who watch videos

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg[/YOUTUBE]

LOL

 

[DBT]

You have until now, but suddenly it has become an inconvenient thing to do?

I assumed everybody watched it. It's really good video. But yes, it's inconvenient to reply to nonsense which was answered in the video. I think you know you are wrong and probably watched the the video, but choose to be annoying and difficult, your choice.

If you have an argument, post it yourself.

Based on what you have said to me so far, I don't think you know what you are talking about. Your remarks suggesting that all of those who happen to be nurses are not capable acquiring an engineering degree (name one nurse, yada, yada) is, quite frankly, bizarre.

Nor did I say anything controversial, which indicates to me that you have your own interpretation of what I said, an interpretation that has little or no relationship to what I actually said.

I think that you are arguing against your own strawman.

 

[DBT]

A video is not a valid argument/post. Enter your argument in text or STFU.

Video contains arguments and I have entered my arguments already, so STFU yourself.

Sorry, but I've just looked at this thread from beginning to end, but I didn't see where you have 'entered your arguments' - an argument being a reasoned explanation for given set of propositions, which is supported by evidence.....but I don't know, maybe you mean something else.

 

[barbos]

There have been countless threads about this topic and they all proceed the same path. This one is no exception. The wrong side is flat out trolls the right side, they don't care about facts, science, data, they just ask for it and then when they are presented with it, they ignore it and ask for it again. And they can do that because militant political correctness is a norm in our society especially among left.
And that posted video is actually pretty similar to our discussions. Norvegian female "researcher" is particularly disgusting, but the man is pretty bad too. I particularly like reaction of US (female by the way) researcher watches the video of norvegian "scientists" and says "amaizing" to the "arguments" of their norvegian opponents.

 

[bigfield]

We need more data!

Being a programmer I'm constantly, constantly faced with the 'women in tech' debate. Everyone has an opinion. One of the leading minds and commentators on the subject, though, Jeff Atwood, blogger of Coding Horror, and co-owner of Stack Exchange, has posted quite a bit on it.

One study he posted a while back made a pretty clear case that, on average, women just aren't as attracted to IT as men, and that largely accounts for the disparity in numbers in the field. Whether that's cultural or genetic might not be entirely clear, but the emergent fact seems pretty clear to me: there are real differences between men and women when generalized.

You should link to Atwood's article or the study.

If a hypothetical female or male had wise parents who could school them on the way the world works they might say something like this:

- women tend to like [a], , and [c] so there's a good chance that type of thing might be suitable for you, so give it some thought. If you don't feel your passionate about it, on the other hand, that's ok too.

I'm not a parent (yet), but I can tell that would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of what you know about psychological differences between men and women. One has to be careful not to stereotype their children.

Your hypothetical daughter is likely to turn out to be a typical girl, but there is also a significant chance that she will not. If you focus on typically girl interests instead of the whole gamut of children's interests, you're setting a norm for her behaviour that doesn't line up with her actual interests, and that isn't helpful.

Better to provide an environment that allows a child to show their strengths and interests and then provide for their develop along whichever path they choose. Children will stagnate or develop problems if their parents try to make them into somebody they aren't cut out to be.

Understanding the genetic/cultural realities of men and women would also serve as a better guide on things like why there is gender disparity, pay disparity, and so on. As far as I can tell a lot of the popular sentiment in these areas is based on social memes, and not reality.

Agree with that. We do well to practice a bit of amateur sociology and psychology, identify social structures and understand where we fit into them. Naturally, one's children would also benefit from that understanding.

 

[Toni]

You should link to Atwood's article or the study.

If a hypothetical female or male had wise parents who could school them on the way the world works they might say something like this:

- women tend to like [a], , and [c] so there's a good chance that type of thing might be suitable for you, so give it some thought. If you don't feel your passionate about it, on the other hand, that's ok too.

I'm not a parent (yet), but I can tell that would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of what you know about psychological differences between men and women. One has to be careful not to stereotype their children.

Your hypothetical daughter is likely to turn out to be a typical girl, but there is also a significant chance that she will not. If you focus on typically girl interests instead of the whole gamut of children's interests, you're setting a norm for her behaviour that doesn't line up with her actual interests, and that isn't helpful.

Better to provide an environment that allows a child to show their strengths and interests and then provide for their develop along whichever path they choose. Children will stagnate or develop problems if their parents try to make them into somebody they aren't cut out to be.

Understanding the genetic/cultural realities of men and women would also serve as a better guide on things like why there is gender disparity, pay disparity, and so on. As far as I can tell a lot of the popular sentiment in these areas is based on social memes, and not reality.

Agree with that. We do well to practice a bit of amateur sociology and psychology, identify social structures and understand where we fit into them. Naturally, one's children would also benefit from that understanding.

A couple of questions:

What is a 'typical girl' in your opinion? How would she differ from a 'typical boy?'

How do you separate practicing a bit of amateur sociology and psychology for the benefit of your children from avoiding stereotyping your children?

I'm not being sly or arch, just curious.

I often disagreed--very strongly--with my father but one of the best pieces of advice he ever gave to me was to think for myself. I should make up my own mind, not based upon what other people thought. It was an extremely powerful thing to say.

 

[rousseau]

You should link to Atwood's article or the study.

If a hypothetical female or male had wise parents who could school them on the way the world works they might say something like this:

- women tend to like [a], , and [c] so there's a good chance that type of thing might be suitable for you, so give it some thought. If you don't feel your passionate about it, on the other hand, that's ok too.

I'm not a parent (yet), but I can tell that would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of what you know about psychological differences between men and women. One has to be careful not to stereotype their children.

Your hypothetical daughter is likely to turn out to be a typical girl, but there is also a significant chance that she will not. If you focus on typically girl interests instead of the whole gamut of children's interests, you're setting a norm for her behaviour that doesn't line up with her actual interests, and that isn't helpful.

Better to provide an environment that allows a child to show their strengths and interests and then provide for their develop along whichever path they choose. Children will stagnate or develop problems if their parents try to make them into somebody they aren't cut out to be.

Understanding the genetic/cultural realities of men and women would also serve as a better guide on things like why there is gender disparity, pay disparity, and so on. As far as I can tell a lot of the popular sentiment in these areas is based on social memes, and not reality.

Agree with that. We do well to practice a bit of amateur sociology and psychology, identify social structures and understand where we fit into them. Naturally, one's children would also benefit from that understanding.

I'd post the article if I had an inkling where to find it, was something he posted on Twitter a long time ago.

I don't disagree with the bolded but, in my mind, there's a subtle difference between what I'm suggesting and right out dictating the path of your child.

There's telling them who they should be, and then there's teaching them about the world. I see your point that you'd want to avoid reinforcing norms, and also that your children's actual interests would be king, but how about this:

- don't even have a conversation in the context of gender norms, if you notice your kid has the qualities of a strong programmer/engineer, maybe say something like "hey you're awesome at this, people who are awesome at that often like this field.. why not check out this field and see if it interests you, if not be whatever you want to be because I'm an awesome supportive parent who's just trying to give you ideas

or

- hey, in the world there's this shitty thing called gender norming, and in my opinion there's no reason why you need to follow gender norms, however, statistically people with [x] or [y] quality that you have are very good at this set of professions, why not check them out and see if they interest you, if not be whatever you want to be because I'm an awesome supportive parent who's just trying to give you ideas

I don't see any reason why a parent can't have a rational, open conversation with their kid about their future and not avoid brain-washing or dictating to them. It's just guidance and conversation from someone who has decades more experience with the world than their child.

But yes, your child's actual interests are clearly number one. The original point I made was more about using reality to inform decision making when pragmatic to do so, than an absolute guide.

Yea I get you should let your kid think for themselves, and be the principle decision maker, although as a parent I think you need to recognize that your child probably also has extremely limited information and has no idea why/when/what/how or anything. So in a world where it costs 80k to get a college education it makes sense to me to try to inform them about their options before they make a decision.

And this is someone who's speaking from experience. When I was growing up I could have easily completed a computer science or engineering degree right out of high school and been in the workforce for almost 8 years already, and even been making 6 figures, but because I had zero guidance from my parents I made a long series of dumb mistakes before stumbling to the finish line.

 

[bigfield]

There have been countless threads about this topic and they all proceed the same path. This one is no exception. The wrong side is flat out trolls the right side, they don't care about facts, science, data, they just ask for it and then when they are presented with it, they ignore it and ask for it again. And they can do that because militant political correctness is a norm in our society especially among left.
And that posted video is actually pretty similar to our discussions. Norvegian female "researcher" is particularly disgusting, but the man is pretty bad too. I particularly like reaction of US (female by the way) researcher watches the video of norvegian "scientists" and says "amaizing" to the "arguments" of their norvegian opponents.

The video, The Gender Equality Paradox is very different than the discussions that typically occupy this forum.

Eia investigate the question of whether psychological differences exist between men and women, but the consensus on this forum is in the affirmative, that biological psychological differences between men and women exist and influence people's choices.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone on this forum who shares the views of Cathrine Egeland and Jorgen Lorentzen, that innate psychological differences do not exists and have no scientific support. But if you are aware of any such forum member, feel free to name them and if possible, link to their claims so I may stand corrected.

In addition, your own comments are not supported by the evidence presented by Eia's interviewees and are not supported by any evidence, anywhere:

But women don't want to be programmers, they want to be nurses and teachers. That's what that video discuss and the reasons for that are biological and evolutionary.

The video also shows that there are social reasons for the differences between men and women's career choices. Egeland, Lorentzen and Huitfeldt all point out that there are differences in the way in which boys and girls are treated, and society sets norms for boys and girls. Eia visits a toy store to show this in action.

Lippa's work shows that social norms are consistent between cultures, which suggests that they share a common biological origin, but the norms still exist. This does not show that there are not social structures that influence children's gender identity, but rather that these social structures discourage children from deviating from the behaviours typical of their sex.

And studies have shown [culture] has nothing to do with the problem. Watch the damn video.

The video doesn't support your claim: Eia actually shows that culture is a factor, but biology is also a factor. Our choices are a result of innate psychological traits and the social structures we exist within.

There was a recent study of effect of testosterone on women. They found even single injection instantly makes them better at spatial navigation, ability which is linked to mathematical abilities.

The study doesn't make the link with mathematical abilities; that is your own addition. You probably think it's an obvious extrapolation to make but you should support it with evidence rather than expecting us to accept it on your authority.

In other studies it was found that women and men use different parts of the brain when solving the same task. In general women use different parts of the brain more equally, whereas men are more concentrated on certain specialized parts.
So it suggests that it's not so much about differences in the brain (which still exists) but about how it's used and hormones play a significant role.

So this explains why women are bad at mathematics and such, they can't turn off "feeling" part of the brain which interfere with "thinking" part of the brain. Men on the other hand have "feeling" part suppressed to begin with.

That would be an interesting study to read, too bad you didn't provide a source. Without a source, your claim about suppressing brain function is unsupported. The only study I can find is this one cited by Will Wiley but it says nothing about the 'feeling' part of the brain. You should link us to the study that says that women "can't turn off the feeling part of the brain", as you put it.

Name one engineer who has a nursing degree, and no, biomedical engineering is not engineering. Engineering in the usual meaning of the word.

Biomedical engineering has a large amount of overlap with electrical engineering, including math, sensors and actuators, and microcontrollers, as well as overlap with mechanical engineering. Your personal definition of engineering is bullshit.

 

[barbos]

rousseau, so you went to programming because of the money? that's very practical of you.
As you may have noticed I have a hard time processing how people over 20 can be deciding between nursing career and let say programming.
That's just does not compute for me, but I am a dumb boy who pretty much had known general direction since the age of 10 and completely decided by the age of 16