Numbers Don't Lie

Monday, August 07, 2006

Sex Differences in the Brain






















Chart above is a summary of recent a study on psychological gender differences.
In comparing differences between the sexes, researchers use a statistical measure called d. This indicates how far apart the averages of two groups (in this case men and women) are, taking into account the range of values that contribute to each average. For example, the value of d for adult height is around 2. There is no arguing that in any given population men, on average, are taller than women. For behavioural and psychological phenomena, a value of d greater than 0.8 is considered large, of 0.5, moderate, and of 0.2, small. Any d less than 0.2 is a negligible difference.
Of the 124 cognitive tasks studied, 30% had a value of d close to zero and in a further 48% of cases, d was small. In other words, only 22% of reported behavioural differences between the sexes are worth raising an eyebrow over.
In summary, men and women think differently, but not that differently.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

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6:40 PM

 

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