Are men smarter than women?
Intelligence is a subject close to every ambitious parent's heart. IQ testing tends to stir passionate responses among just about everyone, not least because studies regularly show differences between the sexes.
Are boys really more intelligent than girls? Most laypeople assume they are. They consistently rate their male relatives as smarter than their female relatives, whether they themselves are male or female. Children think they are brighter than their parents, but especially their mothers. They consider themselves far more intelligent then their grandparents, but especially their grandmothers. Parents of both sexes agree that their children are brighter than they are, but especially their sons. These findings are cross-culturally robust, having been demonstrated in Hong Kong and Japan as well as South Africa, Belgium and the United States.
However, though a considerable social influence in itself, how much credibility can be given to lay opinion? After all, virtually everyone thinks they are more intelligent than the average while, by definition, half of them must fall below the average mark. Men consistently overestimate their own overall IQ while women consistently do the contrary.
Nevertheless, while hotly contested for reasons I go into below, from Scotland to China, males consistently come out slightly above females in all the most widely used IQ tests. The obvious question is: Why? Experts have come up with a number of explanations.
One obvious explanation is that these tests simply reflect reality. Men may simply benefit from a superior genetic endowment with respect to intelligence. Indeed, amid a public furore on the subject a number of years back, 50 of the world's top experts were moved to write to the Wall Street Journal to register their belief that intelligence was mostly a matter of genetics.
But what, exactly, is measured in IQ tests? Laypeople generally consider intelligence in far broader terms than conventional tests allow. This is one of the reasons why the theory of multiple intelligences, advanced by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, holds considerable appeal. Of his seven intelligences, only two are valued at school - verbal, or linguistic; and logical, or mathematical. Three are valued in the arts - spatial intelligence, musical intelligence and body-kinetic intelligence. And a further two relate to emotional intelligence: interpersonal intelligence (understanding other people) and intrapersonal intelligence (understanding oneself).
Research into these concepts of intelligence by Adrian Furnham, a professor at University College London, shows that most people wildly overestimate their own interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. He discovered that people tend to 'weight' these intelligences differently, giving more importance in overall intelligence to logical, then spatial, then verbal, intelligence. A pattern, in other words, that corresponds exactly to male strengths.
Some would argue that this prejudice infuses the whole intelligence-testing field and, together with other social influences, explains male 'superiority'.
One advantage that cannot be underestimated, for example, is the self-fulfilling prophesy effect brought on by the higher expectations that boys are taught to have of themselves and that others have of them. The extraordinary power of expectation is also demonstrated when average pupils do exceptionally well after their teacher is falsely told they are highly gifted. The modesty training that girls receive in many cultures also has a noted effect.
One of the most convincing arguments that social practices rather than genetics explain the sex-IQ gap comes from a study in Slovakia. Unlike their British and Belgian counterparts, Slovakian women were highly confident in estimating their overall and verbal intelligence. This may be because the role of women was different in socialist eastern Europe than in the capitalist west. Women were more active in the economy, were socialised differently, were more represented in parliament and non-traditional occupations and were encouraged to obtain educational qualifications.
IQ tests have a social significance, as do the prevailing opinions of laypeople. Males think they are brighter than females, though chiefly in spatial and mathematical areas - only a part of intelligence but a fairly weighty part in most cultures. Depending on your point of view, this is either a lamentable, socially constructed disadvantage for girls or a reasonable reflection of genetic realities.
Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer
