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A_Wanderer

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Half the population will dismiss this story - but a new study claims the cleverest people are far more likely to be male than female.

Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for tasks of high complexity, according to the authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn concludes.

They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, typical for people with first-class degrees.

When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.
link

Im not touching this one with a ten foot pole
 
well honestly I think that differences in IQ scores have a lot to do with how men and women learn. Typically in the US, math and science are more geared towards and pushed upon boys. The standard IQ tests are rather heavy in the mathematical and spatial categories and therefore are biased towards males. At least that is how it is in the culture I live in. How it is in the rest of the world I know not.

However, I just recently took an IQ test and according to the results I would outscore 95.5% of the population. I'm female :D
 
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Someone mentioned Tom Wolfe's BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. He often cites (but doesn't necessarily corroborate) such controversial data in his writings. I've enjoyed his last two novels but HOOKING UP in between was weird. It had some of this type stuff.

~U2Alabama
 
Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn concludes.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard considering the second class citizen status that women endured in many places around to world until recently. And even today, if you think that the scientific field is equal, you've got to be very naive.

The genetic differences are arguable.

But the Nobel thing is nonsense because it doesn't take into consideration that less women were being educated, and certainly less were being educated at the best institutions to receive the most prestigious post-graduate degrees than men. Obviously the prize winners skew towards the Y chromosome.
 
heh everything in this world is skewed towards the Y chromosome. Well that is everything except, cooking, cleaning, caring for kids....
 
Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes

Of course they do! It clearly has nothing to do with the fact that until very recently women were often denied the chance to gain a university education at all, or that even today there are significant barriers to women pursuing an academic career. No, it must all be attributed to "genetics."
 
Yes, all men are more intelligent than all women. I will genuflect before the next one I see due to my inferior intelligence..

Even if that was true, what about emotional intelligence? It could be argued that emotional intelligence is ultimately far more important and useful. One can be quite intelligent, but if one lacks certain capabilities intelligence is wasted.

I would never say all men lack emotional intelligence but some do and some can't seem to listen, follow directions, or to control themselves and use emotional intelligence when trying to express their thoughts - as we often see in FYM.
 
I think that emotional "intelligence" isn't particularly useful; cynical manipulation of others empathy and compassion takes more skill.
 
I think men are accorded more respect generally for what they do than women are. There is gender bias.

That being said, although it pains me to admit it, I tend to find most of the greatest contributions to science, arts, philosophy have been made by men. I think if you pit an individual woman against an individual man, there is not much difference and I am aware of many of the immense contributions of women. But I think if you are talking sheer numbers.

For the sake of argument, I will discount Nobel Prize Winners, which I believe are part of a political process, and other subjective measures. I will also discount IQ scores which may be skewered to math and spatial, don't place as high an importance on verbal intelligence and leave out artistic intelligence.

But if we are talking about innovative contributions...

All that being said, I don't know whether this is attributable to higher intelligence, greater expectations and opportunity, the fact that women's contributions are buried somewhere, the sometimes inherent humility of women that makes them uncomfortable to push their accomplishments forward and to make sure they are credited for their contributions, or perhaps the immense single-handed purpose that men can be capable of at the exclusion of everything else. I'm not sure whether it is the intelligence of men or the psychology of men. I think some men are less fearful of pushing the envelope, pushing boundaries.

Now we will see what happens if the expectations and opportunity for both sexes do become equal, if women aren't afraid to outshine men, and a hundred other inequities are factored in. But to be honest, I do not know what the result will be.

Although, I will say when you get to Renaissance men and women which does not require the singleminded purpose I talked about earlier, I would guess they would be of equal brilliance. Women are good at multi-tasking, multi-expression. The greater the breadth of expression and creation, the less discrepancy there is--this measure being how many things are you good at.

But if you are talking about the average to gifted man and woman,I find no significant difference. And most of us are going to fall into that category. So, as a woman, I wouldn't be too disheartened and if I were a man, I wouldn't get too cocky.
 
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I am always pretty dubious of IQ tests. The guy who invented IQ testing (Alfred Binet, if I remember correctly) had an IQ himself of something like 200!

IQ tests have always been bias towards those who invent them. In the past people from different ethnic backgrounds have scored low, as have women and people from working class backgrounds.

IQ tests are invented by middle-class, white, male university professors on the whole and therefore this group is more likely to achieve higher scores. I don't mean to bash this particular group. I am just questioning the validity of a single study claiming IQ is proof of some ultimate 'intelligence' or is linked to academic achievement when there are so many other factors at play.
 
I think that IQ tests are indiciative of intelligence; of course in different areas. But potential and success are not based on intelligence.
 
That probably should read strictly and if I was so inclined I could make a jibe about "Chimpy in the White House" :wink:
 
Let's throw another curve into this. How much is genius is associated with youth--say young adults 20-40. Seems to fall off after that age.
 
This is pretty ridiculous, considering individual human intellect isn't based on averages. There's plenty of dumb people of both sexes, including, apparently, the authors of this study.

Melon
 
I'd be interested to see the actual article as they make some fairly big conclusions based on a study which investigated just a student population.

I can't really see how they can conclude that men are on average more intelligent than women when they have not studied a range of people from the entire population, but rather people with a more academic background.

This study appears to have more holes in it than a string vest.

:madspit:
 
I find it funny when people say one gender is better or smarter or whatever than the other at something.

It's very simple:

There's guys who are smart, and guys who aren't.
There's girls who are smart, and girls who aren't.

And there's different kinds of smarts-book smarts, street smarts, emotional factors, practical factors, etc. Some people of both genders lean more towards one kind of intelligence than another, and some people from both genders are more emotional than practical, and vice versa.

Angela
 
I suspect that this is nothing more than another one of those flawed studies that will end up on the rubbish heap of scientific history.

Remember The Bell Curve? Right.
 
I just hate how the media uncritically reports 'studies' every single day on every conceivable subject, and I'm not knowledgeble enough to know if the fault lies with a clueless media or with very savvy marketing by cynical scientists. I just don't know, but I hate it.

You know the stuff, studies prove tomatoes cause cancer, no wait, tomatoes prevent cancer, oh nevermind. Or, studies show new wonder cancer vaccine (to reach the market in fifteen or twenty years time, promptly never heard of ever again).
 
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