What is Digg?152 Comments
- atdigg, on 10/11/2007, -15/+151Let me call ***** on this, did they repeat the same test with boys? I bet people in general are likely to perform worse if they are intimidated.
- rcar, on 10/11/2007, -2/+107It's similar to studies that have been done looking at racism. In general, people do better when they're expected to do better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect - FadieZ, on 10/11/2007, -50/+106Again with the excuses. Can't girls just accept the fact that men excel in math?
- jdb252, on 10/11/2007, -1/+49It's called the self-fulfilling prophesy in education... It also works on a more macro level - if you tell a teacher about 2 statistically identical classes, saying one is smarter than the other, the perceived "smarter" class will perform better because the teacher is willing to challenge them.
Same issue here but on the consumer-side, if you will. - PoeticExplosion, on 10/11/2007, -2/+42Horrible summary! This is a well-known psychological phenomenon. People unconciously perform to the level of the stereotype. It has nothing to do with "irritating" them.
For example, they did the same test with Asian women. They split them into three groups, a control group, a group that was asked to think about the fact that they were all women, and a group that was asked to think about the fact that they were Asian. The "Asian" group did better than the control, and the "women's" group did worse.
Strangely enough, telling a class that this phenomenon exists is enough to counteract it.
EDIT: I got all this from Berkeley's psychology webcasts. Anyone interested in this sort of thing should really check out Psychology 1 and also Social Psychology on the Berkeley website. - spraguep, on 10/11/2007, -6/+42This is *****. I've read the same thing where they performed this with white vs. black instead of gender. It has nothing to do with the fact that they are girls but the fact that they are human, and humans at the subconscious level are easy to manipulate.
- swordedge, on 10/11/2007, -1/+36A hundred years ago, girls were often told that doing math is the only thing they were good at.
If your child says they were told something about girls or boys doing better at a particular skill, especially mental ones, respond with "Where'd you hear that piece of bull *****?" - Blizaine, on 10/11/2007, -0/+24at first I thought Yoda had submitted the story
- CaptShmo, on 10/11/2007, -6/+30They keep telling me women are better at giving birth than men are, and so far i've been unable to prove them wrong.
- ColinCampbell, on 10/11/2007, -1/+19I apologize in advance for a lengthy comment, but I'm reading Phillip Zimbardo's "The Lucifer Effect" and there's an interesting take on this:
"I am reminded of the classic demonstration by an elementary school teacher, Jane Elliott, who taught her students the nature of prejudice and discrimination by arbitrarily relating the eye color of children in her classroom to high or low status. When those with blue eyes were associated with privilege, they readily assumed a dominant role over their brown-eyed peers, even abusing them verbally and physically. Moreover, their newly acquired status spilled over to enhance their cognitive functioning. [...] However, the most brilliant aspect of her classroom demonstration... was the status reversal the teacher generated the next day. Mrs. Elliott told the class she had erred. In fact, they opposite was true, she said; brown eyes were better than blue eyes! [...] The new test scores reversed the superior performance of the haves and diminished the performance of the have-nots. [...] The brown-eyes gave what they got. They dominated, they discriminated, and they abused their former blue-eyed abusers." [page 144] - TrevorBradley, on 10/11/2007, -12/+29I get this weird feeling that I'm going to get dugg down for this, but isn't everyone here missing the point?
Girls are put into this kind of environment every day. Don't bash the test or its parameters. Bash the society that makes us even test for this in the first place.
Many of you are coming across like a bunch of masochistic arrogant *****, and worse yet, getting dugg up for it. - r00tus3r, on 10/11/2007, -7/+18So, they went around telling a bunch of girls that they suck at maths and screwing up their futures? How do they really conduct studies like this?
- mykbot2600, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13I believe it. If you've read the book "Blink," then this will probably seem to be related to some ideas discussed there, and this will seem to make sense.
In short, any discriminatory mindset place upon a person of any group can impair their ability to do as good as they can. - mythandros, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11I think you've raised an interesting question. If we're going say that women doing more poorly at math is a function of self-fulfilling prophecy than couldn't we apply the same logic to the idea that men are chauvenistic (sp?) pigs and dullards as portrayed by popular media and most commercials these days?
- AzDraon, on 10/11/2007, -2/+12Agreed.
I dont understand who is telling girls this bull crap. I had never even heard that girls were worse than boys until I was in high school, and then I was still confused because out of the 20 students in my Algebra 2 class, the top 3 students in the class were girls. - apetrie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Wow the comments on this article are unbelievable.
The point is that it is not good for girls to hear that they are going to be worse at math than boys just because they are girls. Without that negativity, they do better. I don't think this is a "girl" thing, it does apply to anyone about just about anything, however it seems men love to harp on this one, and you can deny it all you want, but I personally witnessed several occasions growing up where girls were mocked and put down by teachers themselves for even trying to speak up or do well in math.
Guys love to use the whole men are better at math thing all the time to explain why there are less women in some professions. It may be true that men GENERALLY have a tendency to do better in math, it is not fair to say though, that any particular man is better than any particular woman because of their gender. Each person should be given an equal chance, and if constantly telling girls that they are not going to be good at math (even if they are capable) is harmful to a girls ability to learn and excel in the subject, perhaps its worth not discouraging your daughters with it. This is something that has been done for a very long time now, discouraging girls in math and science, and may be affecting the statistics that support the claim itself. - jimmiss, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7We should be teaching people to not let what others say limit them, and not pretend something isn't true just because we don't to hear about it. Man... girls have better linguistic skill and African Americans in general are better athletes, but if I see some woman or black guy come up to me I don't expect the girl to be a great writer and the guy to be good at basketball or something. Some people DO think that way, and they're retarded. Just like I don't expect and individual boy to be good at math, but if there were 200 boys and 200 girls I would expect the boys to do better.
- porterfield, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7"buried for poor grammar in the titled"
You hypocrite. Don't go English Nazi if you can't be bothered to fix your own mistakes. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9I'm a white male, aged 19 - 34. Everyone listens to me!
- VillaStraylight, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8If someone were to tell me that a man can do a task better than I will ever be able to, then I would get pissed off and start studying in order to beat him. But, hey, maybe I'm special.
- cgruber, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Girls also do badly at peeing when standing up.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Oy, way to miss the point. ANYONE under these conditions will perform worse. It's not limited to girls. But do people see why that matters? Because in our society, we're constantly bombarded with messages telling us boys are better than girls in math. We try to pin it on some innate biological difference, but for all we know, it could be as simple as the fact that the message exists.
It's a well-established phenomenon, occurring in many facets of education, and what it does is basically ensures that stereotypes are true. I mean heck, tomorrow I could start spreading rumors that people under 5'9 do poorly in geography, and if the rumors stuck, I promise you there'd start to be a decline in geography scores for people under 5'9. If you believe in the stereotype, it'll come true. - frodsteamin2, on 10/11/2007, -9/+15i like bad girls
- JDMARK075281, on 10/10/2008, -2/+7The point is that misogyny has been taken seriously for decades. On the other hand, MISANDRY has been ignored and trivialized for decades.
- godphase3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6This reminds me of a study in which a number of African-Americans took a test, and the only difference in the tests was that in half the tests, they had to check off a box saying what race they were. The group that had to check the box did worse on the test. (The conclusion being that merely by labeling themselves as being African American, they subconsciously were "psyched" out by racism that they bought into without even knowing it)
- sbader, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6But at least the media doesn't tell you that Paris Hilton, Brittany, etc. are supposed to be your role models.
- xxTazxx, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8It's known in psychology as the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
- sbader, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7they kind of seconded that statement on the second page of the article.
- rnwen2750, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Because of the first thread here. Along with the rest of the misogynistic stuff on digg. It's a lot. Trust me.
- kelvie, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, girls actually perform better (in math and verbal skills) when told that the fact that girls perform worse was due to experential factors (i.e. nurture, not nature) than if they were told that they were completely even with boys.
Source:
Exposure to Scientific Theories Affects Women's Math Performance , Heine, S.J., and Dar-Nimrod, I. (2006) in Science (the study was done at my Uni :)
@FadieZ comment,
I, too, once believed that words can not be detrimental, and people should just suck it up, but if we continue to perpetuate stereotypes like these, the scientific community will be losing a lot of potential members, seeing as females make up more than half of the population. I hope you get dugg down from now on. - tvh2k, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5You don't need to say "edit" on digg, buddy. That's why you have those 2 minutes.
- Teku, on 10/11/2007, -5/+9This reminds me of a woman's studies course I had to take, the professor messed up adding 3 and 6 and produced 8 on the board. She then launched into a huge tirade for an hour about how men had kept her down as a child and would not let her learn math and that is why she could not add 3 and 6 to produce 9. True story.
- duffman03, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Someone discouraged from doing something generally is not as good at it? No really?....
boys never stop hearing how girls mature faster. hmmmm - trinest, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6People get teasted about doing maths if they are a girl? Must be an american thing...
- meggani, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Don't you mean, "I wish I were your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves?"..cause I really don't know if I want someone to be my integral..
- atdigg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Yeah, but a pregnant black woman can always sue you for discrimination and take your money, so.. shhh!
- Smeed, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Is it the same for driving? If so, girls, you are MUCH better at driving than men! Hopefully it works in reverse.
- returnofajedi, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Wow, and I almost skipped this story because I couldn't figure out what it said...
- nimbusnacho, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5I learned about this stuff in social psychology about a year ago, its not really a new thing as far as I can remember. The same effect will happen with anyone, I forget the name of the effect but generally it's something about you believing statistics or something without any solid evidence and having it subconsiously affect your actions. And for the record you can bet that this study was done in a variety of different ways, with boys/girls, races, ages etc. Psychology studies have to be pretty thorough in order to get published.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3We can thank the "self-esteem" mongers for that. We are raising a nation of feral morons, but boy is their self-esteem high.
I think unmerited self-esteem is worthless, if not downright destructive, and self-respect earned by diligence and achievement is the only kind of self-regard worth having. - LordBalderdash, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4and yet, oddly enough, there was also a recent study that suggested that asians tend to do better at math despite having less confidence in their mathematical abilities than their american counterparts who did not fare as well despite a higher level of confidence.
- acmestyled, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Seriously. "Do badly at math"? At least we're better at English.
- nartvq, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2You know, as a recent graduate, I'd have to agree with that comment regarding interests. Women just aren't as interested in math as men, hence the lower scores. I studied engineering at the University of South Florida and Drexel University. At both schools the trends were the same. For science/engineering courses, the ratio was generally 8 or 9 males to 1 female. For non-math intensive majors (business and humanities) the ratio was more even.
- sapphicbeats, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2i think that was kind of the point. if anyone is told that the expectations are lower because "people like them" are not as good as "these other people over here", then it is gonna weigh on you. couple that with the historical FACT that women (and other "minorities") have, throughout history, had these perceptions not only thrown at them, but used to justify keeping them in a position of submission in some way shape or form, and it is GOING to have an affect on people.
and to l33tsauce: if girls can't drive, why are boys insurance rates higher? ;) - WiseWeasel, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Maybe they're just better at looking like they're trying...
- Flummoxer, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5Self-fulfilling prophecies are nothing new.
- Galaeron, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5And 20 years from now, the girls who participated in this study can't get into college cause they still suck at math
- furplepig, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3It's true that pop culture is full of jokes at the expense of men. It does NOT follow, however, that "the world revolves around the needs and desires of women". Any woman who's either abandoned the thought of having children in order to have a career, or vice versa, or who struggles to do both, will tell you as much.
The men-are-dumb jokes really just point out that there IS still a power dynamic between the sexes. (If we'd actually eradicated racism, do you think there'd be so many movies about how lame white people are? Mocking privileged groups simultaneously tells everyone else that they're not actually inferior, AND assuages the guilt of said white men. Case in point: drumjunky's comment.) - pilgrim3970, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Guess nobody told my wife (who holds a degree in math) this.
- luet, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5Until it is proven that the male and female brain of the exact same species (human) are so drastically different that mental cognition is affected directly, male and female brains are not superior in specific tasks to either.
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