1. Test of verbal ability
Below are ten anagrams. Unscramble the letters in each to form a common English word. You will have two minutes to complete ten item:
EILNST
EGHITW
AAENRS
AEGIMRT
ADIRWZ
AEKRST
CCENNOT
AALMNU
DEEGNR
EFORST

2. Intelligence and Gender Differences
Claire, Mallory and Brian

3. Overview of Gender Differences
No documented gender disparity in overall intelligence
Male advantage on spatial tasks
Female advantage on language and memory tasks
Disproportionate male incidence of dyslexia, delayed speech, attention disorders and mental retardation

4. Brain Size Brain Size Broca’s Studies
Parisian hospital study – Men have larger brains
252 male brains, 140 female brains
Male brains 14% larger in mass
L’Homme Mort Cave Study – Craniometry
Craniometry – measurement of skull size
Male and female brain size difference increasing over time
Problems with Broca’s research (Gould, 1980)
Age and height differences – females actually have the advantage
Small number of brains analyzed in cave study

5. Brain size Modern study of brain size (Nopoulos et al., 2000)
Male and female brains similar
No significant differences in volumes of cerebrospinal fluid, volume of the cerebellum, cortical depth, gyral and sulcal shape, and degree of cortical surface complexity
Males have larger cerebrum

6. Androgens Androgens – Kimura’s studies
Girls w/congenital adrenal hyperplasia – better spatial skills
Boys with increased testosterone have decreased spatial skills
Estrogens (Collaer & Hines, 1998)
Exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES)
No physical effects on sex differences

7. Functional Organization
Brain Lateralization Theory
“Left-brain” females and “right-brain” males?
Theory does not work – females should be superior at math
Bilateral language processing theory –
Damage to specific hemisphere has distinct effects on men, but not women (Springer & Deutsch, 1981)
Women use both hemispheres to process language, men more lateralized to left (Shaywitz et al., 1995)
Research inconclusive
Other studies show same amount of lateralization (Frost et al., 1999)
Meta-analysis: no significant differences (Sommer, Aleman, Bouma, & Kahn, 2004)

8. Functional Organization
Brain matter – MRI study (Haier, Jung, Yeo, Head, & Alkire, 2005)
Women have more white matter and less gray matter than men in regions associated with intelligence
Similar IQ scores, but brain functions in different ways
Men – frontal and parietal lobes
Women – frontal lobe and Broca’s area
Allows for differences in IQ subtests, but similar overall IQ
Women’s brains more efficient?

9. Psychoevolutionary (Crawford, Krebs 1998)
Three main assumptions of Evolutionary psychologists
Pressure from natural selection
Universal species-typical solutions
Impact on differences between the sexes
“I just happen to be very tuned in to my ‘hunter and gatherer’ instinct.”

10. Psychoevolutionary theories (Crawford, Krebs 1998)
Gaulin and Fitzgerald’s Theory of Mating Systems
Large home range for males
Home range refers to the area within which an animal freely travels on a regular basis
Spatial differences based on way to find potential mate

11. Psychoevolutionary theories (Crawford, Krebs 1998)
Silverman and Eals’ Division of Labor Theory
Spatial measures showing male bias correspond to attributes that would enable successful hunting.
Successful foraging would require finding food sources within such configurations and relocating them in ensuing growing seasons.
The test

12. Kalahari Bushmen
One of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies in the world
Also known as the San

13. Gender Roles and Stereotype Threat
Stereotype Threat (Steele, 1999)
Fear of being subjected to a pejorative stereotype
Fear of inadvertently confirming that stereotype via underperformance

14. Gender Roles (Good, Aronson, Inzlicht, 2003)
Can reinforce a stereotype by encouraging personal identification with it
e.g. females as mathematically deficient
males as linguistically deficient
Can depress the performance of either sex and thereby exaggerate inherent sex differences

15. Detecting Stereotype Threat (Good, Aronson, Inzlicht, 2003)
Mediated through two factors:
Evaluative scrutiny: occurs when a person associates him/herself with a given stereotype
Produces lack of enjoyment, anxiety, underperformance
Identity salience: when stereotype-relevant thoughts are instigated by group composition
e.g. a black student in a primarily white classroom

16. Males, Females, & Stereotype Threat (Wicherts, Dolan, Hessen, 2005)
A study investigating the adverse of effects of male-dominant stereotype on female math performance
Stereotype threat typically activated by:
Presenting a test as diagnostic for the stereotyped ability
Asking for relevant biographical information (before or after the test)

17. Method Participants: 159 students enrolled in a psychology course
Design: participants randomly divided into two conditions
Control- test prefaced by a statement discounting gender differences
Stereotype- test prefaced by an emphasis on gender differences
Materials: three math tests
Difficult test- 15 challeging SAT questions
Easy test- 20 relatively easy multiplication problems
Persistence test- 24 addition and subtraction problems

18. Results
Three way interaction gender, testing condition, and test difficulty
Stereotype condition enhanced the women’s scores on the easy test, while depressing scores on the difficult test
Stereotype condition neither enhanced men’s scores on the easy test, nor depressed scores on the difficult test

19. Details of the Findings

20. Conclusions Stereotype threat Hampers performance on difficult tasks
Enriches performance on easy tasks in stigmatized group
Arousal
The observed decrements in difficult task performance may be attributable to arousal (i.e. anxiety or agitation)
Evaluation Apprehension
Diminished performance not due simply to a fear of test-taking
Females scored higher on easy tasks when exposed to negative stereotypes

21. References
Good, C., Aronson, J., Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents’ standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24,
O’Brien, L. T., Crandall, C. S. (2003). Stereotype threat and arousal: Effects on women’s math performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29,
Steele, C. M. (1999, August). Thin: ice: “Stereotype threat” and black college students. The Atlantic Monthly,
Wicherts, J. M., Dolan, C. V., Hessen, D. J. (2005). Stereotype threat and group differences in test performance: A question of measurement invariance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89,