Men more intelligent than women?

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 12:04 pm

The attached article is from the Daily Mail, 14 September 2006...

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 12:41 pm

We knew that, the important point was not to let them know that we knew.

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:40 pm

On any test, there is a tendancy to do better the more you have in common with the person setting the test. So the interesting question is whether the tests used to assess the IQ were set by men.

Personally I have limited faith in IQ tests, which are especially weak at assessing the IQ of people brighter than those setting the tests. I'm not even sure whether an extremely high score indicates intelligence or nuttiness, in my experience probably the latter.

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:45 pm

In all seriousness, its true IQ tests are seriously flawed.

Aran_Thule · Post by **Aran_Thule** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:47 pm

i read a few responses to this question in the newspaper and tbh they were all flawed and biased by whoever it was that was talking.
i remember watching a programme when i was young which was like the krypton challenge but with a team of men and a team of women.
In the actual programme the men won due to the final deciding challenge being an obstacle course which im sure most would agree would be men biased.

I for example know that i cant multitask to save my life, and yet most women seem to be able to juggle several things at the same time, likewise i expect there are things that i can do that most women would find hard.

So in the end i think the debate is kinda pointless and will come down to ego stroking and stick waving, almost as pointless as the tests someone did to find out if murphy's law existed.

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:53 pm

Aran_Thule wrote:almost as pointless as the tests someone did to find out if murphy's law existed.

Actually I think there would be a lot of point to seriously testing murphy's law. If we can prove its true it tells us something very important and deeply worrying about the nature of the universe.

Post by **Xest** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:53 pm

Cromcruaich wrote:In all seriousness, its true IQ tests are seriously flawed.

Depends, some people assume they're a measure of someones all round capabilities and that's generally where the problem lies. They're only designed to measure certain properties of intelligence such as spacial awareness, logical skills and such, they don't for example measure creativity. When used to measure the things they're intended to measure and not taken out of context the way they so often are they're actually a very good measure.

In terms of the original article therefore, the outright claim that men are more intelligent than women isn't possible to confirm from this research however you could potentially claim it's evidence that men are better at things involving logic or spatial awareness. Even then I'm not sure that 3 IQ difference is a big enough difference to really matter in life, particularly if say women were to be proven better at things involving creativity or some other area of intelligence. The test has a pretty big sample size though so regardless of how good the tests are it shows there is some difference, quite what it's impossible to tell.

Most proper IQ tests (the types used by professional phsycologists, large institutions etc.) are developed or at least certified by members of Mensa so the worry of being brighter than the people setting or certifying the test in terms of the things the test tests for isn't an issue, if you score high enough for it to be a problem then you're likely in a position to have further, more thorough tests.

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:58 pm

Xest wrote:Most proper IQ tests (the types used by professional phsycologists, large institutions etc.) are developed or at least certified by members of Mensa so the worry of being brighter than the people setting or certifying the test in terms of the things the test tests for isn't an issue, if you score high enough for it to be a problem then you're likely in a position to have further, more thorough tests.

<giggles madly> Given mensa members can have happy arguments about what is the right answer to some of the questions on the Mensa entrance exam....

Post by **Xest** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:25 pm

A lot of questions used on IQ tests can tell you different things about a person, a quick answer of a. compared to a slow answer of b. mean completely different things about a person's chain of thought and understanding of the question. The exam and likewise with IQ tests aren't just a case of 100 multiple choice questions with 1 right answer out of 4 each and then you get a score out of 100, if you score 90+ or whatever you pass, there's far more to it than that, there are answers that are obviously wrong to filter out people who can answer that question logically at all, then there are some that are more wrong than others and answers that are equally as right depending on who's interpretation of the question and who's reasoning you use for the answer. It's not exactly a bad thing to debate if one question is more correct than another when the question is ambiguous to start with.

Kallima · Post by **Kallima** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:58 pm

Xest wrote:A lot of questions used on IQ tests can tell you different things about a person, a quick answer of a. compared to a slow answer of b. mean completely different things about a person's chain of thought and understanding of the question. The exam and likewise with IQ tests aren't just a case of 100 multiple choice questions with 1 right answer out of 4 each and then you get a score out of 100, if you score 90+ or whatever you pass, there's far more to it than that, there are answers that are obviously wrong to filter out people who can answer that question logically at all, then there are some that are more wrong than others and answers that are equally as right depending on who's interpretation of the question and who's reasoning you use for the answer. It's not exactly a bad thing to debate if one question is more correct than another when the question is ambiguous to start with.

Would be nice if IQ tests were set on that sophisticated a level. The best one I've seen was actually testing logic and computer aptitude. I'm afraid most tests boil down to the 100 multiple choice questions style. Some questions are too cultural. Some require a win or lose intuitive leap that could be pure luck. Maybe that sort of thing could be used to test creativity if someone was really cunning. Maths based ones may end up telling you more about someone's arithmetic than their IQ. Even the pure logic questions can have the inherent flaw that there is an equally valid logical answer that the person setting the test hasn't thought of at all.

Mind you, IQ tests can tell you some quite interesting stuff about the person who set the questions. <giggles>