Men and Women Really Do Think Differently

[Skeptic Ginger]

Men and Women Really Do Think Differently according to our gray matter and white matter brain structures.

I wanted to discuss this without the political context we were discussing it in before. Forget about the political or social implications where there is no supporting evidence for the conclusions, but I think one can recognize the evidence based gender differences without claiming non-evidence based conclusions about those gender differences.

 

[to.by]

First I note that the piece is 3 years old. Not excactly stop-press-topic then. Then I see that it concerns the distribution of white and grey matter in the brains of men and women. Well, grey matter concists mainly of nerve cells while white matter concist of axons and dendrites connecting the cells. This could be interpreted as a sign of different functioning of male and female brains. That doesn't mean that men and women necessarily think differently. The brain has much to do in keeping the body running apart from thinking, which may be a rather minor part of its workload.

 

[fls]

http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/pediatrics/faculty/neurology/haier/pdf/83.pdf

I'm always curious as to why a 1% difference gets reported as "men and women really do think differently" instead of "men and women think mostly the same".

Anyway, does anyone know if this work has been replicated in order to see which of the associations were spurious (at least some are bound to be in a fishing expedition of this sort)?

Linda

 

[Darat]

And if this is a real biological difference I wouldn't be surprised that the given difference between any given two men or two women would be likely to be greater than the difference between the populations as a whole.

 

[Darat]

Do we see this sort of differentiation in other organs? (Apart form the sex ones of course!) Are there gross differences in structure between say a man and woman's kidneys?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Do we see this sort of differentiation in other organs? (Apart form the sex ones of course!) Are there gross differences in structure between say a man and woman's kidneys?

The actions of hormones that have gender specific effects are not limited to acting on the reproductive organs. That's where this discussion began since testosterone has a significant impact on behavior. Hormones in pregnancy affect all body ligaments preparing the pelvis to spread a bit during delivery. Not that that is a big deal but it was one example that came to mind. Obviously our body shape and musculoskeletal systems have distinct differences though they may have overlapping but shifted bell curves when it comes to size and strength.

And the genes that are on the X and Y chromosomes are not limited to only reproductive organs. According to wiki, assuming it is correct,

The X chromosome contains about 2000[2] genes compared to the Y chromosome containing 78[3] genes, out of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 total genes in the human genome.

Both genders have X chromosomes meaning males would have the same genes, just no back up copies. That means more risk of defects but it does not means the genomes are otherwise different.

But females would have none of the 78 genes on the Y chromosome. OTOH, half of those might be duplicates leaving 40 or so genes females do not have.

since the Y chromosome is single, it has duplicates of its genes on itself instead of having a second, homologous, chromosome.

(also from wiki)


I've not had a chance yet to look these articles over but I will later. They have free web access.

Nature: The Y Chromosome

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/pediatrics/faculty/neurology/haier/pdf/83.pdf

I'm always curious as to why a 1% difference gets reported as "men and women really do think differently" instead of "men and women think mostly the same".

Anyway, does anyone know if this work has been replicated in order to see which of the associations were spurious (at least some are bound to be in a fishing expedition of this sort)?

Linda

The article I posted has different summary.

Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

I'll have to investigate further if this is worded in a way that exaggerates the differences. It's always better to look at the original research so thanks for finding it. I'll have to read it before commenting further.

 

[CFLarsen]

Men and Women Really Do Think Differently according to our gray matter and white matter brain structures.

I wanted to discuss this without the political context we were discussing it in before. Forget about the political or social implications where there is no supporting evidence for the conclusions, but I think one can recognize the evidence based gender differences without claiming non-evidence based conclusions about those gender differences.

Why? You had no problems discussing the political and social implications of men being more violent than women, even pointing to scientific evidence to back that one up.

So why not this issue?

I'm always curious as to why a 1% d... that yourself, before you opened the thread?

 

[rjh01]

Apart from the differences in the brain what about the other things that impact on behaviour
- Differences in physical weight and strength.
- Only one gender can get pregnant, produce milk.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the OP article:

Men and women apparently achieve similar IQ results with different brain regions, suggesting that there is no singular underlying neuroanatomical structure to general intelligence and that different types of brain designs may manifest equivalent intellectual performance.

And in regards to the 1% difference Linda noted,

With respect to voxel types, men had roughly 6.5 times the number of GM voxels identified as related to intellectual functioning as did women, and women had roughly nine times more WM voxels than did men. With respect to regional effects, in women, 84% of the identified GM voxels correlated to IQ were in the frontal region, as compared to 45% in men. Even greater sex differences were observed in WM, where for women 86% of the identified voxels were frontal, as compared to 0% in men. More left hemisphere voxels (GM plus WM) were identified in both men and women (64.6% and 65.3%, respectively), consistent with previous reports of left lateralization of both anatomic and higher brain functions (Geschwind, 1972)....

The point I am making is that while not letting false conclusions about the implications be drawn from these differences (there was no gender difference in the IQ of these subjects) at the same time, ignoring the fact there are differences is just as unscientific.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Why? You had no problems discussing the political and social implications of men being more violent than women, even pointing to scientific evidence to back that one up.

So why not this issue?

Because people and you are one of them, want to make every thread about Hillary Clinton or about politics. That conversation has wound down, time to move on to other things.

Compare with the "We are almost the same as chimps" headline. One might think that there are bigger differences between men and women, than between humans and chimps...

This is a false analogy and I see no relevance.

Well, women are one rib short....

First, you have the myth backward and second, it is a myth.

 

[plumjam]

One might think that there are bigger differences between men and women, than between humans and chimps...

I'd love to see a series of lectures on this topic

 

[fls]

The article I posted has different summary.I'll have to investigate further if this is worded in a way that exaggerates the differences. It's always better to look at the original research so thanks for finding it. I'll have to read it before commenting further.

Almost the entire article presented relative differences. This paragraph mentions absolute differences.

GM voxels correlated to FSIQ represented 9.6% of all GM
voxels (693,360) in the male brain. GM voxels correlated to FSIQ
represented only 1.7% of all GM voxels (612,007) in the female
brain. WM voxels correlated to FSIQ represented only 0.1% of all
WM voxels (492,814) in the male brain. WM voxels correlated to
FSIQ represented 1.3% of all WM voxels (416,630) in the female
brain.

And again, that assumes that all of these associations are real. Since any method of dividing a group of people in two and performing many measurements has the effect of finding differences, how much of this is specific to the method chosen (sex) and how much is due to the random shuffling of characteristics? One could just as easily conclude that the inconsistency of the results means that the handful of scattered spots found to be associated with intelligence was spurious as it was not replicable.

Linda

 

[Bikewer]

A couple of weeks ago, Science Friday had a segment about research into lying. Using current mapping/imaging technology, they found that fluent liars tended to have more of the connective "white matter" than people who are not so adept.
The hypothesis was that improved "connectivity" with various parts of the brain may allow more fluent and rapid story creation.

They did not go into gender differences in the segment, but can we assume that women are better liars than men? I assume that a brain structure that would allow more fluent lying would also allow better story-telling and improvisatory acting as well....

We shouldn't forget that very subtle differences in structure can make for big differences in behavior/cognition.

 

[bpesta22]

FWIW, I should hear any day now if an article on sex differences in IQ gets published. If it does, I'll add more here.

It seems like the current literature shows a small IQ difference favoring men; 3-6 IQ points. There was also a recent meta-analysis on IQ and brain size which found that men have bigger brains (even controlling for body size).

Also, the paper I hope to get published argues (though it's not original) that using IQ tests to study sex differences on IQ is a bad idea as the IQ tests are made so that men and women don't differ. I show the difference with ECTs despite no difference on a standardized IQ test.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I doubt that IQ tests have a margin of error that is less than 3-6 points, bp. Certainly one cannot devise a test so free of influence by learning up to the point of being tested that it could be that accurate.

And brain size isn't as relevant as which parts of the brain are larger. Don't some marine mammals have very large brains because they have an area for sonar? And didn't we learn that brain size itself could not predict intelligence when we discovered just how intelligent certain bird species are?

 

[bpesta22]

I doubt that IQ tests have a margin of error that is less than 3-6 points, bp. Certainly one cannot devise a test so free of influence by learning up to the point of being tested that it could be that accurate.

And brain size isn't as relevant as which parts of the brain are larger. Don't some marine mammals have very large brains because they have an area for sonar? And didn't we learn that brain size itself could not predict intelligence when we discovered just how intelligent certain bird species are?

I suspect the ME is 3 points at the low end and maybe 6 at the high, but I'd have to look it up. But we're looking at groups of people versus individuals, and the group difference is at least 1.96 times bigger than the standard error (or else it wouldn't be significant).

It's indeed a small effect, but it's been detected (if you buy the internal validity of the recent studies showing it). I think the effect is theoretically interesting, but I see no practical value in it. It might explain the over-representation of men at the tails of the bell curve though.

I bet you're right also about brain size-- it's not global size per se that matters but size of this or that area. Still, I think the literature now shows pretty clearly that whatever construct(s) sheer brain size measures, it correlates with IQ.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I've not considered IQ tests to be highly reliable. Useful, yes. A general indicator of intelligence, certainly. But it has been argued for years that there is no good way to measure IQ with the kind of precision you are suggesting.

I have no doubt that on the test, the standard of error might be small. But you are making the assumption that the test is accurately measuring something and that is a different question.

So you can conclude that on standard IQ tests the results are X. But you cannot say those tests actually measure what we use them to measure.

For an IQ test to actually measure IQ, the tests would have to be equally valid measuring the IQ of humans not raised in the US, and in kids not raised in the Western world (assuming correct language translation was even possible). An IQ test is not equally valid across cultures because it is not a perfect measuring tool of actual IQ.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From Wiki:

Gender and IQ

Main article: Sex and intelligence

Some studies claim that men outperform women on average by 3-4 IQ points.[62][63] However, during a revision of some tests in the 1940's women outperformed men, which urged test makers to change the tests until men were able to score equally.[64]. Studies illustrate consistently greater variance in the performance of men compared to that of women (ie. men are more represented at the extremes of performance), and that men and women have statistically significant differences in average scores on tests of particular abilities, which even out when the overall IQ scores are weighted.[65][66]

62 ^ Publications [http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/publications.asp]
63 ^ Stumpf, H. and Jackson, D. N. (1994). "Gender-related differences in cognitive abilities: evidence from a medical school admissions program". Personality and Individual Differences 17: 335–344. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(94)90281-X .
64 ^ Quinn McNemar, The Revision of the Stanford-Binet Scale, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942
65 ^ Douglas N. Jackson and J. Philippe Rushton, Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test, Intelligence, Volume 34, Issue 5, September-October 2006, Pages 479-486.
66 ^ Lynn, R., & Irwing, P. (2004). Sex differences on the Progressive Matrices: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 32, 481−498

(emphasis mine) Boy that is an incriminating claim, isn't it? Men rigged the test.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

From Wiki:

(emphasis mine) Boy that is an incriminating claim, isn't it? Men rigged the test.

Probably because the test had questions related to cooking and cleaning rather than metalwork and sport. Obviously women would perform better.