Male Brain vs. Female Brain
Male Brain vs. Female Brain: Is one Better than the Other?
Differences between males and females have been an issue affecting our society for thousands of years. Why are we so different? Why are we so similar? Several scientists have attempted to explain these variations, all using different methods and approaches. A very controversial study by psychologist J. Philippe Rushton suggested that men are innately more intelligent than women. This study gave arousal to several studies that oppose it, saying that it is rather the evolutionary and biological differences that make the divergence between the sexes. Men and women’s intelligence cannot be compared, their brains are evolutionarily and biologically different, and so their intelligence levels must be measured in different ways.
Rushton’s studies are invalid because he did not use a representative research method. He “analysed 100,000 scholastic aptitude tests (SAT’s) written by American teens, age 17 and 18.” (Crossley, 2005) The SAT’s are standardized tests that focus on analyzing a student’s level in Math and English, and are crucial for entrance to university. Even though they are a very good indicator of a student’s academic level, they should be used with caution. There are many factors that affect how a student performs on these tests, such as how much they studied, how they felt during test day and how many times they have taken the test. These factors take a great part in the results of the experiment, and yet Rushton did not take them into account. His findings said that “males scored the equivalent of 3.63 IQ points greater than their female counterparts”, and that these differences were “present at every socio-economic level and across several ethnic groups”(Crossley, 2005). This was a poorly founded generalization, since the people who take this test are usually people who want to go to college, giving a small pool of people. The questions on these standardized tests only measure some types of
Differences between males and females have been an issue affecting our society for thousands of years. Why are we so different? Why are we so similar? Several scientists have attempted to explain these variations, all using different methods and approaches. A very controversial study by psychologist J. Philippe Rushton suggested that men are innately more intelligent than women. This study gave arousal to several studies that oppose it, saying that it is rather the evolutionary and biological differences that make the divergence between the sexes. Men and women’s intelligence cannot be compared, their brains are evolutionarily and biologically different, and so their intelligence levels must be measured in different ways.
Rushton’s studies are invalid because he did not use a representative research method. He “analysed 100,000 scholastic aptitude tests (SAT’s) written by American teens, age 17 and 18.” (Crossley, 2005) The SAT’s are standardized tests that focus on analyzing a student’s level in Math and English, and are crucial for entrance to university. Even though they are a very good indicator of a student’s academic level, they should be used with caution. There are many factors that affect how a student performs on these tests, such as how much they studied, how they felt during test day and how many times they have taken the test. These factors take a great part in the results of the experiment, and yet Rushton did not take them into account. His findings said that “males scored the equivalent of 3.63 IQ points greater than their female counterparts”, and that these differences were “present at every socio-economic level and across several ethnic groups”(Crossley, 2005). This was a poorly founded generalization, since the people who take this test are usually people who want to go to college, giving a small pool of people. The questions on these standardized tests only measure some types of