

15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics - darshan
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/25/15-minute-writing-exercise-closes-the-gender-gap-in-university-level-physics/

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hugh3
I remain really skeptical.

If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start
of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a
different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples
values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at
the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly
worse, if you're a man.

I could start speculating on mechanisms for this, but I think it's better to
wait until the same effect has been replicated in a different place and a
different time (and let's hope that none of those future test subjects have
read this article or else they'll know what's up).

On the other hand, if one were to repeat this experiment one would have to
wonder whether it's ethical to force male students to do a writing exercise if
you have reason to believe that it will hinder their ability to learn physics.

Update: My alternative hypothesis is that all the competent male students who
showed up for a Physics class and were given a silly "write about your values"
exercise got so offended by such a frou-frou exercise in what was supposed to
be a physics class that they dropped out and enrolled in something else.

~~~
stelfer
I doubt you have spent time teaching undergraduate physics.

Your assertion that the male students might have dropped out because of the
"frou-frou" exercise is easily construed as chauvinistic.

Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think
you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly,
for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to
your male peers.

But here's a hypothetical for you. You come to my company for a job interview.

When you come see me, I ask you what your favorite subject is and I let you
talk about it for twenty minutes. Then we start talking about the job.

When you see Bob next door, he immediately starts drilling on topic.

Which interview do you perform better on?

~~~
pjscott
> Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think
> you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and
> explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are
> inferior to your male peers.

I keep hearing this "inferior to your male peers" bit, but oddly enough, when
I was in high school, the higher-level math and science classes were mostly
populated by girls. The more respectable the class was, the more female-skewed
the sex ratio was. I think I was the only person in my physiology class with a
Y chromosome. This was in the American Midwest, in a vaguely lower-middle-
class area.

To this day, I still don't know what was up with that.

~~~
blasdel
physical sciences != physiology

You're right that for the last couple decades, the life sciences have been
increasingly dominated by women, but that's not what was being discussed.

~~~
pjscott
Physiology was just one example. I could just as easily have talked about the
highest-level classes my high school offered in math and the physical
sciences, but they all had longer, clunkier names. All of them had that same
female-skewed sex ratio.

------
chesser
_"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the
inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen
fields."_

I wasn't aware that this had been definitively established as a myth.

Last I checked, there was a gender gap. There are a lot of interpretations
that wish to ascribe this to a social difference rather than a physical one.

Further, this is an _introductory_ course.

The overwhelming number of _top_ scientists are male. IQ tests (FWIW) also
place more males at _both_ the top and bottom ends, with females clustered
more around the middle. One interpretation there is that nature can afford to
take more chances with males, so there are more extremes.

I can think of at least one factor that _is_ physical, even though it doesn't
have to do with mental capacity _per se_. A major impediment to learning tends
to be psychological laziness; anything that gets us to push past this means we
are using more of our capacity. Testosterone increases risk-taking behaviors
and reduces complacency. This drive to constantly seek out the new and
challenge the old might be sufficient by itself, even if there are no relevant
neurological differences otherwise.

I also don't understand this push to try to equalize gender distribution. Even
if the ONLY differences are social, it doesn't follow that it's _better_ to
socialize females in ANY given arbitrary manner just because they're female.

Clearly any field should be open to any individual who wishes to pursue it.
Trying to equalize the numbers, given the current disparity, means pushing a
_lot_ of females into pursuing subjects they aren't interested in. Even if we
posit that these fields have been traditionally male-biased, the _majority_ of
males are not interested in them.

This has to be open on an individual level, and whichever way it shakes out
with regard to gender, it shakes out.

It's profoundly unfair to cite social differences and then blame colleges who
only get people after 18 years of social indoctrination.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the
inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen
fields."

I just thought more men preferred Physics.

Do women really contend with this? Is it any worse than for a man trying to be
a kindergarten teacher? Do theoreticians jump online and check the sex of the
author's of papers in Physics A before they'll read them - like "damn that ToE
is pretty compelling with great predictive powers and a beauty akin to the
Maxwell equations but, y'know, we can't let it stand it's been formulated by a
woman" ...

~~~
Gianteye
I'm sure a decent proportion of scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and
folks in fields that tend to be dominated by men that couldn't give a toss for
the gender of their fellow researchers. They couldn't care in the least who's
publishing and who else inhabits their labs. They care about the truth.

Unfortunately, it only takes a few extremely chauvinistic individuals to sour
an entire field towards women. If you look through James D. Watson's book _The
Double Helix_ , you'll see dozens of disparaging references to Rosalind
Franklin[1], inditing her for such crimes as not wearing enough makeup, and
being a woman running a chem lab.

I think the flavor of a field can be tinted strongly by edge cases. Although
it is a form of confirmation bias, I believe people can't help applying
extreme behaviors by individuals to their understanding of the group. I'm sure
if I heard the president of some college spouting racial epithets, I'd look a
little more sternly on the college as a whole and question how it treats its
students. I would make the association that if someone with these views was
allowed to become an authority, if it had taken a number of people who shared
these views to allow them to get there.

1\. _<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin> Rosalind Franklin had an
incredibly fascinating life, and most likely would have been credited with a
Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA helix if she hadn't died before it
was awarded. She actually died of ovarian cancer, caused by the xray machinery
she operated in investigating the composition of the DNA crystal._

~~~
chesser
> _Unfortunately, it only takes a few extremely chauvinistic individuals to
> sour an entire field towards women._

They are simply reflecting the social mores of their day. IBM had the socks
and garter police -- for _men_! In addition, men tend to tease _each other_
much worse than ragging on someone for not wearing enough makeup.

Additionally, we all carry the evolutionary legacy -- or baggage -- of the
past. EVERY species with sexual reproduction discriminates according to
gender!

Sexual competition enters the picture unavoidably as soon as you introduce a
member of the opposite gender to a single-gender group.

If I have 5 guys in a room working on a startup, and I add a "cute girl", it
will immediately change the dynamic and become a distraction and likely become
divisive.

You're NOT going to be able to counter both biological and social factors
built up over time.

I would hypothesize that if you took any productive small startup, and swapped
out a male for a female of equal ability, it would probably destroy the
cohesion.

------
Groxx
Odd results, with the male scores _dropping_ , but I suspect that merely has
to do with a small sample size (399 in the whole set).

This makes sense, especially as a number of people I know feel stupid because
they have test anxiety. My wife included. "Non-"tests such as these seem like
they could help quite a few, as they have the exact same physical location as
real tests, but break the trend of habitual anxiety because little to nothing
is on the line. Practice tests elsewhere don't share the classroom setting,
and there's quite a bit of evidence that location influences memory / emotion,
so it would seem they should be about as effective as they are at combating
anxiety (ie: not much, and not for many (anecdotally)).

edit: <strikeout>Though, to be potentially inflammatory, this _does_ seem to
support the opposite stereotype of men having more control over (non-anger-
based) emotions than women. Especially when you look at the original article
(linked below by Locke1689: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943596>),
and see almost no difference in score distribution for men but _huge_ changes
for women in the B and C categories (A had almost no change - surprise,
surprise, the ones without testing problems showed no gain).</strikeout>

~~~
anthuswilliams
I don't think it supports the idea that men have better control over their
emotions than women. Rather, I think it illustrates the effects of stereotype
anxiety. The article also mentions the same phenomenon wrt black students
taking standardized tests.

Although I don't have the source on hand, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece a few
months ago reporting a similar effect in the performance of white basketball
players relative to that of blacks in American high schools.

~~~
Groxx
That's a good point, forgot the black student results. I take it back! Thanks
:)

------
mhartl
Men dominate the physical sciences and mathematics, with the disparity growing
as the subjects get more advanced. The notion that a 15-minute writing
exercise can close this gap strains credulity.

For a hard-headed introduction to this subject, I recommend _The Blank Slate_
by Steven Pinker. Women and men have different cognitive strengths: on
average, women are more verbally fluent and are better at inferring emotional
states from facial expressions and body language, whereas men are better at
spatial rotations and abstract reasoning. Women do better or worse on
typically "male" tasks depending on the phase of their menstrual cycles and
the corresponding levels of androgens ("male" hormones) in their bloodstreams.
Patients undergoing male-to-female sex-change operations do progressively
worse on "male" tasks and better on "female" ones as the estrogen therapy
progresses, with the opposite effect in female-to-male patients. And so on.
While the bell curves substantially overlap, the notion that men and women are
cognitively identical is scientifically untenable.

Perhaps the continuing disparity in the abstract sciences points to
discrimination against women in those subjects. And yet, women make up
approximately 56% of college graduates, with men at 44%—a 12-point gap. I find
it telling that virtually no one decries _this_ disparity, nor infers from it
a systemic anti-male bias in higher education.

The authors of these kinds of studies clearly _want_ there to be no gender
gap. (The results of this study could reasonably be described as "the
15-minute writing test that boosts female learning and suppresses male
learning".) When the political biases of the researchers are so evident, it's
difficult to trust the results.

------
rfugger
I'd be interested in seeing the results for a control group that wasn't given
any writing exercise at all.

------
mkramlich
I've always been offended that there's a gender gap when it comes to pregnancy
and childbirth. Perhaps a writing exercise could be devised that would erase
the horrible, oppressive and misogynistic stereotype that prevents men from
becoming pregnant and giving birth. That is necessary if we are to ever
achieve true equality.

(cheek <\- tongue)

~~~
Tichy
In that case, it seems rather women have to change to achieve equality.

------
patio11
I would be very interested to hear whether stereotype threat responds to the
prompt: "Write something about fish. You have 15 minutes."

------
axiom
Can someone who has access post the original paper?
<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6008/1234>

~~~
Locke1689
Here you go:

[http://acm.cs.northwestern.edu/site_media/Science-2010-Miyak...](http://acm.cs.northwestern.edu/site_media/Science-2010-Miyake.pdf)

~~~
RK
According to the paper, it looks like to do best on the final exam you'd want
to be a male in the control group with low gender stereotype endorsement. To
do best on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation, you'd want to be a
female in the values affirmation group with _high_ gender stereotype
endorsement.

So basically females that think they are supposed to do poorly at physics, but
affirm they are good at something, do better than ones that have no particular
preconceived notion...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>So basically females that think they are supposed to do poorly at physics,
but affirm they are good at something, do better than ones that have no
particular preconceived notion...

So we have to tell women they're going to fail at physics because they're XX
and then at the last minute say "ha ha fooled you, you're really awesome".
Then we'll have a well verified strongly supported ToE by next Christmas.

------
yummyfajitas
If this is true, it seems we can completely replace all affirmative action,
"women in X" programs and special resources, and all that other stuff with 30
minutes of writing.

This is fantastic - now we can stop spending millions on "women in X", and
instead spend the money on real science. Right?

------
xiaoma
I can't believe that the article didn't even mention once that the exercise
_decreased_ male performance. The text was also full of assertions that are
clearly politically motivated.

~~~
chesser
Since they only had two groups, one of them HAD to come out ahead.

I also noted it listed MEAN score instead of MEDIAN.

This would allow for a small number of people to spike the score. For example,
a group of friends, or a study group. I have tutored students from a 60 or 70
to close to 100% in the space of a single math test.

If the divvying up happened to put a few more brainiacs in one group and a few
more dullards in another, this could account for the entire swing.

The specifics of dividing up the groups is _very_ important. For example, if
one entire classroom got Essay A and another got Essay B, even if there were
equal numbers of bodies, it would only take one good study group to account
for the discrepancy.

------
lutorm
A popular but fairly comprehensive summary about stereotype threat research is
at <http://reducingstereotypethreat.org/>.

------
baldercrash
>Think about the things that are important to you. Perhaps you care about
creativity, family relationships, your career, or having a sense of humour.
Pick two or three of these values and write a few sentences about why they are
important to you.

What has this got to do with physics and why are universities so interested in
students' private lives?

~~~
hugh3
That's pretty much what my reaction would have been if they'd tried to give me
an irrelevant flowers-and-kittens writing assignment on the first day of
undergraduate physics. I'd probably be seriously second-guessing my choice of
university if they did.

------
dmoney
Did values affirmation actually make men score lower? Or were they just ranked
lower because women, on average, had higher absolute scores than the control?

Speaking of control, writing about values in a physics class could cause
people otherwise interested in physics to lose interest in the class.

------
rudyfink
The fact that they tinkered with the Y axis scaling on the graph makes me
quite suspicious of their results. I admit it is knee jerk, but anytime I see
charts asking me to compare things and the scales are different I just wonder
what else someone felt the need to obscure.

------
iopuy
When I was 12 years old we were forced to take Tae Kwon Do in school for some
odd reason (yes an American school). At the end of the practice session we
would all sit around in a circle in the brightly light gym/dancing room with
the instructor in the center. He would tell us to close our eyes for 2 minutes
and when we were told to reopen them the lights seemed brighter. We were told
if we did this once a week every week in life we would succeed no matter what.
Well I have in my opinion succeeded in life so it must be because of the eye
drill.

------
wazoox
Very interesting. It may need to be backed with some more data but it's
promising.

~~~
smokeyj
My money is on statistical fluke, how many times was this experiment even run?
If they're credible they should collect the average over a number of
experiments (the higher the better).

~~~
wazoox
That's exactly what I said, they need more data.

------
VladRussian
confirms my everyday anecdotal observations - for women to get better men
should get worse. Why women can't just reach men's level without need to lower
the men' level? While taking a bit longer and more work, wouldn't that way it
be more beneficial for human species?

~~~
Helianthus16
I find it amusing that you are being downvoted for saying the same thing many
others are saying, but less politely and more baldly.

We are at a point where men are starting to realize that gender imbalance
works both ways, where lots of comments decry the article's inattention to the
male decrease in performance.

But there's still a taboo.

~~~
VladRussian
>...less politely and more baldly.

"[these days] a shape is being ascribed with very high content" - a phrase
from a good movie about another society living an artificial reality -
socialism of the Soviet Union 25+years ago.

