A strange result. When I hear “spatial abilities depend on nurture”, I expect something like “our society teaches boys to be good at sports and video games and other things that require spatial reasoning, so they have more practice.”
This suggests it’s a function of social status, which raises the question of why social status increases spatial reasoning skills. The authors admit education only makes up a third of the difference (and if education was the only issue, we would expect language skills to suffer in the same way, but the “popular wisdom” is that women usually test for better language skills). Homeownership is another weird one—why should owning a home give you better spatial skills (if we assume that the homeowner and their spouse both navigate the rooms of the house the same amount and so on).
The only explanation I can think of is stereotype threat, but again that makes the whole “women are better at language skills” thing weird if we can’t explain where the stereotypes came from originally. Now I want to know whether the stereotype that men are better at spatial and women better at language skills evolved multiple times in multiple societies, or whether it’s just a function of Westerners introducing it everywhere they went.
One thing I’ve heard is that mothers in mainstream American culture let little boys explore (get farther from their mothers) than little girls. When I say I heard it, I mean a friend of mine told me she’d read it somewhere, so I’m just mentioning it as a possible sort of thing, not anything with formal research behind it.
In any case, more early opportunities to move around independently seem like a plausible candidate for improving spacial abilities. I don’t know whether it would corelate with patriarchal vs. matriarchal.
This is anecdote, not data, but I’ve got two girls by two different mothers almost a generation apart. One is currently four years old. I was the stay at home dad between 6 and 18 months, and both her mother and I strongly encouraged her active investigation of the world around her. I was a bit more willing to let her get herself into physical difficulty or get a little dinged up than mom was (babies bounce better than teenagers), but both of us really tried hard to do anything like the “little girls don’t do that, little boys do” sort of thing. I’m not saying that we tried to get her gender neutral toys, but we both pushed her towards knowledge and exploration. For most of a year her most common playmate was a very active boy almost exactly a year older, and he roughhoused with her just as he would another boy (and we let him).
This is a little girl that likes to watch the IPSC vidoes (of other women mostly) (although that may just be because she knows I approve), who was siging the I Love Guns song after only one hearing (not the whole thing), and who will try to climb any rock, any obstacle whatever, as long as she can do it in a skirt. Fights like HELL to avoid pants.
And I’ve NEVER seen a girl more enamored of princesses. I swear to GHOD I have no idea where she gets it. She even gets upset when Mommy doesn’t want ot wear a skirt (mom is not exactly a girly girl).
I have NO idea where she gets it.
Her language and (to some degree math) skills are above normal (she can answer some math questions, but her ability to actually puzzle them out is hit and miss, I’m not good enough to tell whether she’s doing better than guessing or not), but I have less ability to map her ability to catch or throw a ball. I should be working more on that with her, but I suxor at it.
I don’t think nature or nurture has the full say, life is not a hand of poker that you are dealt, it’s more like Gin Rummy with several decks. And lots of jokers.
I mean that they credit the beaten-down feeling they get when they contemplate STEM subjects to stereotype threat (and they name it as stereotype threat). This was in a Google+ discussion so good it went 70+ comments and one blocking.
Found it at last! (Google is terrible for searching G+ o_0 ) Stereotype threat mentioned by a coupla people there, and by others elsewhere—the term appears to be gaining currency in my social circles.
The poster in question has a bit of a habit of generalising from themselves to the world, so I would take it as personally anecdotal before basing a huge amount upon it.
Fair enough. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me too much if it were true. I think a lot of what we call sexism is actually a Victorian variant rather than the whole range of possible sexisms.
A strange result. When I hear “spatial abilities depend on nurture”, I expect something like “our society teaches boys to be good at sports and video games and other things that require spatial reasoning, so they have more practice.”
This suggests it’s a function of social status, which raises the question of why social status increases spatial reasoning skills. The authors admit education only makes up a third of the difference (and if education was the only issue, we would expect language skills to suffer in the same way, but the “popular wisdom” is that women usually test for better language skills). Homeownership is another weird one—why should owning a home give you better spatial skills (if we assume that the homeowner and their spouse both navigate the rooms of the house the same amount and so on).
The only explanation I can think of is stereotype threat, but again that makes the whole “women are better at language skills” thing weird if we can’t explain where the stereotypes came from originally. Now I want to know whether the stereotype that men are better at spatial and women better at language skills evolved multiple times in multiple societies, or whether it’s just a function of Westerners introducing it everywhere they went.
One thing I’ve heard is that mothers in mainstream American culture let little boys explore (get farther from their mothers) than little girls. When I say I heard it, I mean a friend of mine told me she’d read it somewhere, so I’m just mentioning it as a possible sort of thing, not anything with formal research behind it.
In any case, more early opportunities to move around independently seem like a plausible candidate for improving spacial abilities. I don’t know whether it would corelate with patriarchal vs. matriarchal.
This is anecdote, not data, but I’ve got two girls by two different mothers almost a generation apart. One is currently four years old. I was the stay at home dad between 6 and 18 months, and both her mother and I strongly encouraged her active investigation of the world around her. I was a bit more willing to let her get herself into physical difficulty or get a little dinged up than mom was (babies bounce better than teenagers), but both of us really tried hard to do anything like the “little girls don’t do that, little boys do” sort of thing. I’m not saying that we tried to get her gender neutral toys, but we both pushed her towards knowledge and exploration. For most of a year her most common playmate was a very active boy almost exactly a year older, and he roughhoused with her just as he would another boy (and we let him).
This is a little girl that likes to watch the IPSC vidoes (of other women mostly) (although that may just be because she knows I approve), who was siging the I Love Guns song after only one hearing (not the whole thing), and who will try to climb any rock, any obstacle whatever, as long as she can do it in a skirt. Fights like HELL to avoid pants.
And I’ve NEVER seen a girl more enamored of princesses. I swear to GHOD I have no idea where she gets it. She even gets upset when Mommy doesn’t want ot wear a skirt (mom is not exactly a girly girl).
I have NO idea where she gets it.
Her language and (to some degree math) skills are above normal (she can answer some math questions, but her ability to actually puzzle them out is hit and miss, I’m not good enough to tell whether she’s doing better than guessing or not), but I have less ability to map her ability to catch or throw a ball. I should be working more on that with her, but I suxor at it.
I don’t think nature or nurture has the full say, life is not a hand of poker that you are dealt, it’s more like Gin Rummy with several decks. And lots of jokers.
Anecdotally, I’ve had several female friends attribute it to stereotype threat.
Could you expand on that? Do they mean that they have better spacial abilities when they’re by themselves?
I mean that they credit the beaten-down feeling they get when they contemplate STEM subjects to stereotype threat (and they name it as stereotype threat). This was in a Google+ discussion so good it went 70+ comments and one blocking.
Is the discussion still available?
Found it at last! (Google is terrible for searching G+ o_0 ) Stereotype threat mentioned by a coupla people there, and by others elsewhere—the term appears to be gaining currency in my social circles.
Thanks. There wasn’t much new to me there, but I hadn’t heard about sexism being structured differently in Nicaragua, which was quite interesting.
The poster in question has a bit of a habit of generalising from themselves to the world, so I would take it as personally anecdotal before basing a huge amount upon it.
Fair enough. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me too much if it were true. I think a lot of what we call sexism is actually a Victorian variant rather than the whole range of possible sexisms.