Thursday, December 25, 2008

Why women are better at communications and social skills and why men are better at math and sciences

First let's dispense with the idea that women and men are all that different at anything. There is a much bigger gap between an average male and a below average male in mathematics than there is between an average male and an average female. The same goes for science and the opposite is true for communication and social skills.

Secondly, let's look at what the difference is. A few studies show that men are, on average, around 3% better than women at math and science, and that women are better, on average, by the same amount in communications and social sciences. These differences are small (almost minute) and simply do not account for the differences in the number of science and math papers published by men or the psychology papers published by women. Also, this does not account for the differences in other areas like linguistics, a very technical area, chemistry, and biology.

While the number of graduates from university now favor women (around 70% of graduates from post secondary education are female in 2006), the record shows that women are poorly represented in papers, journals, and in the sheer number of major discoveries in math and sciences. So why is it that more women are now graduating from university than men and yet they aren't surpassing men in these areas which usually require higher education.

The biggest thing that we need to consider is disposition. Men are more interested in cars, computers, and non-human things: usually things of a mechanical nature. Women are more interested in people, social hobbies, and things that are social. Secondly, a socialization that more women have to sitting around talking about personal matters is part of this equation. People are interesting and women definitely gravitate toward the study of people. Men gravitate toward things that could be considered anti-social or things that prove their manhood (sports, fishing, and so on). Obviously, these generalizations are somewhat silly, but sadly, there is a lot of truth to them. In the grand scheme of things, the mad male scientist hiding away in his lab is a more acceptable stereotype to us than the mad female one. This is the cultural side that also influences how women view the world. Here is a recent article from New Scientist discussing this aspect: Link

One more note about disposition: many of these traits are linked to needs of the species. The male, in order to prove his manhood, must stand out from others and is thus competitive with his peers far more often than females. We find this type of behavior strongly favored across the spectrum of animals. Most Western and Far Eastern societies discourage these behaviors and we are slowly seeing the diminishing of males in scholarly pursuits. This has been widely documented in recent decades. This competitive behavior leads men to pursue simple things like chess far more often than women (see previous link). It also leads to Math leagues, Physics competitions, and so on. There are few, if any, French competitions, History leagues, or Economics debate clubs in Western Education. The result is that boys shy away from these fields, Economics being excepted. There is no better way to interest a male in a subject than to make it competitive.

Females, by contrast, favor teamwork and group success over self pursuits. The result is obvious. They build stronger families, by contrast, and they often have larger circles of friends. They are often the nucleus of any community and they maintain strong bonds of friendship throughout life. Recent studies say that this is a major factor in female longevity and another reason that widows live well for many years while widowers most often die within a year or their spouse's demise.

We'll continue to examine the differences in men and women from a lot of different directions, but I will argue that we need look no further than the corpus callosum. The reader may reference this brain structure definition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum. Let me offer this simple metaphor: the corpus callosum is the network allowing both sides of the brain to communicate. In men, this network is overall larger than in women, but the splenium (part of this network) is larger in women. We are neglecting individual differences because given any male, his corpus callosum may or may not be larger than any given female. Still, the averages persistently show differences in size of these two regions. Let me emphasize that these differences in size are very small. Keep in mind that disposition is just as important as any physical differences may be.

Before I go off the deep end, and earn the ire of millions of women everywhere, keep in mind that in the hind portion of the corpus callosum (the splenium) is larger in females. This area is not necessarily related to communications of any particular type, but because it is the thickest portion of the corpus callosum, it has the "densest layer of communication" between the brain hemispheres. So, in a way, women have a larger corpus callosum, but not overall. Another thing to consider, albeit with little empirical evidence, is the physical location of the splenium in relation to the brain structures normally associated with math, science, music, and linguistics: the left temporal lobe. The splenium is not close to the left temporal lobe and may not facilitate any communications between the left and the right hemisphere; this seems unlikely, but at the very least, communication through this brain structure is not as great as through other parts of the corpus callosum.

For the sake of science, let us ignore overall brain size. The brain size in males is slightly larger than females but many studies have concluded that brain size makes no significant difference as to the overall cognitive abilities of anyone. The quality of the connections has long been recognized as the major contributing factor to the quality of cognition and/or thought. With this handy knowledge in tow, we can march toward our goal: with the corpus callosum as the major network of cells and dendrites allowing the brain hemispheres to communicate, is it any wonder that at the highest levels of math and science intelligence, we find men. Toward the midbrain and hind brain, we tend to find socialization and thus women are clearly leaders when it comes to social skills like psychology, teaching, and salesmanship (ask any automart who their best sales people are). This is no way implies that either men or women are superior... in fact I might argue that women have the most social advantages in life while men make the best mad scientists (comedy is intentional here).

A recent book called Outliers discusses the effects of a small advantage given to someone over time. It discusses financial advantages, birthdates, and other matters which seem to provide no clear advantage to anyone, but in the year-after-year way that life works, these accumulate to be huge advantages. It discusses how people born before certain dates have more chance of succeeding at university because those date are close to 'cut off" dates that are required for children entering school at the ages of 5. The small advantage given to children early on accumulate over time to make major differences in adulthood.

The physical argument goes something like this: while the differences in math and science intelligence are very small, the long-term effects are gargantuan. The other factors of disposition and social pressure contribute to this and provide men an enormous advantage in maths and sciences at the highest levels over the very best women. This same advantage is afforded women in sociability, salesmanship, and teaching where the very best women are far superior in these areas of life than the very best men.

So, in conclusion, let me say this: a boy locked in room playing with his computer (more likely a video game) is common and a girl playing dress-up with her dolls and barbies is common. We can try to change the nature of humans, but I believe that it all comes down to the corpus callosum.

This blog is more food-for-thought than anything else. I don't prove very much of this but most of it is widely available information and long-since proven. I’d love to hear your feedback, positive or negative (of which I expect plenty).

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