
Girls believe brilliance is a male trait, research into gender stereotypes shows - kafkaesq
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jan/26/girls-believe-brilliance-is-a-male-trait-research-into-gender-stereotypes-shows
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rdlecler1
>The findings show that boys and girls were equally interested in the “hard”
game, but girls were less interested than boys in the game for “smart”
children.

Males and females have different mating strategies -- in humans how much is
nature and how much is nurture is difficult to untangle. It makes me wonder to
what degree the boys attraction status-seeking games is nature vs nurture, or
alternatively to what degree are girls discouraged from status-seeking games
either from nature or nurture. It may, for example, be more evolutionarily
advantageous for females to allocate their time to mastering social
interactions and cooperation (let the boys fight it out). Alternatively,
society could be discouraging girls from competing with boys.

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eruditely
Reminds me of a study that showed that the most anti-women bias online came
from other women.

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tornadoboy55
Not only online. If a girl (especially a pretty one) is having a lot of sex,
other girls will be the first to call her a slut (mostly behind her back). It
has always amazed me how vicious girls are to eachother, even in groups of
supposed friends.. guys tend to shoot the shit, but they do genuinely stick up
for eachother.

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EekSnakePond
It's a mating strategy. If a girl has acquired a capable mate, then the other
females only stand to benefit by successfully undermining that relationship.
Upon doing so, the capable mate chances to be distributed across the girl's
social network are significantly increased, thus, increasing collective
survival.

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gizmo686
Then why do we see this behavior in girls, and not boys.

In fact, wouldn't we expect to see this behaviour more in males because males
can have multiple mates to a greater extent than females can.

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EekSnakePond
Both sides have their strategies to maximize fertility. This is the female
strategy, which enhances the male strategy of sexual aggression.

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Isamu
> The study also found that, unlike boys, girls do not believe that achieving
> good grades in school is related to innate abilities.

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fdsaaf
This belief is accurate. Men and women have similar IQ means, but men have
greater variance. This difference implies that there are more low-IQ men than
there are low-IQ women, and also that there are more high-IQ men than high-IQ
women.

Denying reality, even with the best of intentions, ultimately does everyone a
disservice. We should of course encourage intelligent and driven women to
succeed. We can do that while acknowledging that, yes, brilliance is more
common in men.

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na85
IQ tests only measure one's ability to perform IQ tests, are widely criticized
as flawed indicators of performance and are at best tangentially related to
what most of us would describe as genius or brilliance.

Your assertion that brilliance is more common in men than in women is
unsupported.

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Sir_Substance
>IQ tests only measure one's ability to perform IQ tests, are widely
criticized as flawed indicators of performance and are at best tangentially
related to what most of us would describe as genius or brilliance.

May I ask what measurable yardstick of brilliance you would use, if we are to
eschew the most widely accepted yardstick?

Or are you just moving the goalposts because you don't like the current
answer?

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na85
I don't think there exists a reliable yardstick of brilliance. For example IQ
tests do not and are not capable of assessing creativity, a trait I would
strongly argue is a necessary component of brilliance.

You are free to assume whatever you like about my motives, and you can claim
it's moving the goalposts if you like: There's also a racial bias in IQ test
performance. Would you therefore argue that e.g. black people are less
brilliant than whites? Or Asians?

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Sir_Substance
>I don't think there exists a reliable yardstick of brilliance.

I'm afraid that's not an acceptable answer. I'm rejecting your viewpoint in
favor of currently accepted mainstream psychology until you can back it up
with measurable fact.

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na85
I'm on mobile and can't link it but I encourage you to read a recent study
published in Neuron by Highland, Owen et al about this matter.

