Are Women Actually Smarter Than Men?

About the evidence of the female brain being significantly different from the male brain

A popular myth that indulges the sexists amongst us, is that men and women have very different kinds of brains — or at least that their brains are used very differently.

In 1992, American pop psychologist John Gray (not to be confused with British philosopher John Gray) wrote the famous book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, with which he meant to say that men and women think and communicate quite differently, which in turn supposedly causes a lot of friction in households, at work, and in society at large. Gray hit a nerve apparently since his book sales in the US in the nineties were second only to the Bible!

The strange thing is that neither Gray nor other pop psychologists who took his claims and ran with them have conducted any research to back these claims up. Numerous scientists on the other hand have done the homework and sought to find if there was any truth to the ideas about male and female brain differences.

Again there is a grain of truth to be found on the basis of it all. The fact is that men’s brains are on average slightly larger than women’s brains — with the stress on “on average”. There are still plenty of women who have bigger brains than most men. There are even brain parts that differ significantly in size. The hippocampus, which is heavily involved in our (spatial) memory, is usually larger in women, but the amygdala, dealing with memory, decision making, and emotional responses, is typically larger in men. (Yes, you read that right, the part that deals with emotional responses is typically larger in men!) Sometimes even specific sub-parts of brain parts work differently. Emotional memories seem to trigger the left part of the amygdala more in women, but the right part more in men.

In spite of all these — and more — physical differences, there’s one conclusion that can’t be simply drawn, and that is that physical differences imply behavioral differences. Gray takes his reasoning even further from the true physical differences by alluding to differences that don’t even exist. He claims, for instance, that men use a particular part of one hemisphere to accomplish a certain task, while women utilize both hemispheres to accomplish the same. This would explain the idea that men are more focused and single-minded, while women are better at multitasking. Modern brain scans (fMRIs), however, show that even the simplest of tasks light up our entire brain and that both hemispheres always work together quite closely. And this is no different for men than it is for women.

Talking more, interrupting more?

The scientists that did do their homework, researched some tenacious sexist prejudices, for instance, whether women talk more than men, whether men interrupt others more often, and if women are more perceptive of nonverbal cues than men. They used a metric called Cohen’s d, after statistician and psychologist Jacob Cohen (1923–1998) who made it popular. Basically, the lower the d, the lesser the difference. For instance, looking at physical aggression, the d is about 0.60, with men being more aggressive than women. For height, the d is about 1.70, with men being a lot taller than women. So, what about the homework? The combined results of 73 studies into how much people talk, found a d of 0.11, with women being slightly more talkative than men. The difference is however so slight that it’s barely noticeable in real life. Psychologist Matthias Mehl and his colleagues even found through research that both men and women utter about 16,000 words a day. Do men interrupt more often than women? 53 studies say the d is about 0.15, and again the difference would be hardly noticeable. Also, when women are in charge, they interrupt more and talk a lot more. How about the perception of nonverbal cues? My wife certainly lets me know — after parties or family gatherings — that I didn’t pick up on any of her nonverbal cues, and indeed, Cohen’s d goes up to 0.40, meaning there is a significant difference noticeable. A small grain of truth is found.

Politically correct

Neuroscientist Larry Cahill explains in his 2006 paper Why sex matters for neuroscience why we shouldn’t be too politically correct about differences between sexes. Some psychological conditions are heavily skewed towards either males or females. Autism, for instance, is a lot more prevalent in men, while depression is more common in women. Also, Alzheimer’s disease seems to impact women heavier than it does men. To ignore or evade sex differences could have disastrous effects on healthcare.

Even though there are real differences between both physical appearances and behavior of men’s and women’s brains, the fact remains that the similarities outweigh the differences by a landslide. Some scientists have even suggested that the differences are only there to create more similar outcomes. This is called the compensation theory and could explain why men and women can accomplish the same tasks while showing different brain activity patterns.

Sexist cultural indoctrination

The idea that men have different brains from women stems mostly from sexist cultural indoctrination than reality. Studies have shown that if you tell women they are worse at math than men before they take a test, they actually do worse, whereas, if you tell them there is no real difference in being good at math between men and women, they perform equally well.

In short, in a work situation, we’d all be wise to assume and radiate that men and women are equal to any task. Individual differences are more likely to be just that — individual — rather than gender-related.

Yet another brain myth busted!

If you are interested in stories like these and more, you can buy Essential Psychology for Modern Organizations from Amazon and other bookstores:

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Psychology-Modern-Organizations-scientifically/dp/B08NP12D77/