Are
men smarter than women? No. But they sure think they are. An analysis of
some 30 studies by British researcher Adrian
Furnham, a professor of
psychology at University College London, shows that
men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ. But women, it seems,
underestimate their own candlepower (and that of women in general), while men
overestimate theirs. Furnham talks to NEWSWEEK''s Joan Raymond about his findings
and why perceived IQ matters. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Many studies show that men score slightly higher in IQ
tests. Is this significant?Adrian Furnham: Universally, men tend to
score higher on certain specialized skills, such as spatial awareness. In the
real world, that means they might be better at reading maps or navigating. Women
score higher in terms of language development and emotional
intelligence. But
most experts agree there is no real, important overall difference when it comes
to
gender and intelligence.
But women think they aren''t as smart as men? That''s the
conundrum. What I study is "perceived intelligence," essentially how smart
people think they are. I analyzed 30 international studies, and what I found was
that women, across the world, tend to underplay their intelligence, while men
overstate it.So do most men think they''re Albert Einstein? There
certainly is a greater male ego. It''s what we call the male hubris and female
humility effect. Men are more confident about their IQ. These studies show that
on average, women underestimate their IQ scores by about five points while men
overestimate their own IQs. Since these studies were international in scope, the
results were essentially the same whether women were from Argentina, America,
Britain, Japan or Zimbabwe. Another factor affecting perception may be
distribution of IQ ... Although
are on average the same, the
people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely
to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men
either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom.
Do women tend to think that men are smarter than they are?
Surprisingly, men and women perceive men being smarter across
generations. Both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their
mothers and grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers.
What about the kids? If there are children, men
and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters.So women have a self- esteem problem? I''m not advocating for
self-esteem training and therapy. I think that many of the self-help gurus argue
incorrectly that improved self-esteem increases performance. Helping people to
perform better increases their self esteem. Giving a kind of carte blanche to
self-esteem isn''t a good idea in my mind. Rather, I think it should be that
increased performance and feedback on the causes of that performance, ability or
effort raises self-esteem. As I said, in primary and secondary schools, girls
are outperforming boys. And where appropriate, their self-beliefs, hopefully,
are increasing.
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