

Study: Women performed better on a math test when using someone else's name - DanBC
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/womens-true-maths-skills-unlocked-by.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+BpsResearchDigest+(BPS+Research+Digest)

======
RodericDay
A lot of users seem to be having a really tough time with the conclusion of
the story.

Here is the gist of it: The differences in participation and performance in
math between women and men are due to cultural and environmental reasons, it
has very little to do with intellectual capacity.

There seems to be a huge reluctance to give up this prejudice, it's always
some sort of "there are exceptions, but women and men are different" and
whatnot. They really aren't, not nearly to the degree indicated by the gender
gap. Same with race.

~~~
jerf
It seems weirder to me than that. Let us take it as a given that there really
is a stereotype threat and/or that women are systematically discriminated
against with regard to acquiring math skills. Let us take it as a given that
damage is really being done. The natural conclusion is that regardless of what
name is put on the top of the test, the women should _still_ do worse, because
they really are worse at math at the time the test is being given, which is to
say, after 15-20 years of systematic discrimination. If the discrimination is
effective, then by definition it must mean they really _are_ worse. If they
aren't worse, then the discrimination is either ineffective, or women are
naturally _better_ at math and the discrimination is holding them back (a
position which would be quite complicated to establish and defend).

If the damage can be undone by merely putting a different name on the top of
the test, then that strongly implies that the putative damage is itself
illusory. If the damage can be wiped away so easily, then it can't have been
that bad in the first place. If this _is_ the extent of the "stereotype
threat", then it's obviously not holding them back all that much if _even so_
their real skill is equal to the men's.

I can't help but think that this study was indeed ideologically driven, and in
the zeal the authors had to prove their point about how women aren't worse
than men, they didn't think about the fact this accidentally "proves" that the
discrimination can't be that significant. But perhaps it is just a neutral
study performed out of sheer curiosity.

And just to make it perfectly clear, I am taking their own logic on their own
merits. I'm not inserting my own opinions here, excepting on the question of
whether there was potentially an ideological drive here. (My opinion doesn't
really fit on this axis at all either way.)

~~~
RodericDay
> _Let us take it as a given that there really is a stereotype_

> _the putative damage is itself illusory_

> _My opinion doesn 't really fit on this axis at all either way._

lmao. here's a quote for you:

 _“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type
espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be
sexists.”_

― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

~~~
jerf
You misunderstand. I think there probably is some bias against women going
into mathematics. When someone say "let us take this as true for the purpose
of argument", it does not mean that it isn't really true. It means simply that
in this post, we're not going to analyze the possibility of whether that is
true or not, we're just going to assume it.

There's also a class of people who are so smart they see sexism uniformly
everywhere, even where it isn't. You're being a jerk, not proving how
wonderfully not sexist you are. Refusing to even consider the possibility that
someone isn't sexist is itself a form of discrimination, and I reject your
attempt to pigeonhole me in an effort to make yourself look holier-than-thou.

I'm also not going to fall into the trap of endlessly justifying myself, so go
ahead, have the last word.

------
mjfl
I can't believe any psychological studies these days unless they have been
successfully replicated.

------
Whitespace
_> There's an unfounded gender stereotype that says women aren't as good at
maths as men. Reminding them of this prior to a maths task usually undermines
their performance - just one example of a harmful phenomenon known as
stereotype threat._

I taught [remedial] maths in college where the girls outperformed the boys (I
suspect because they tried much, much harder), so this topic always piques my
interest.

I recall reading in several places that both genders do worse when one is
primed (boys and girls do worse at math when you say 'boys are better at
math'), but I couldn't find the studies.

Does anyone have a link to the study/studies that show both genders do worse
when one is primed?

(While searching, I found some interesting criticism of stereotype threat due
to "publication bias,"[0] which seems even more fascinating to me.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat#Criticism)

------
zaroth
Fascinating result that you can counteract the negative effect of the
statement with anonymity.

It would have been interesting if there was a 3rd leg where they issue the
tests with an "anonymous id number" instead of having them write a false
name...

I wonder if the effect is equivalent of a) writing a fake name vs. b) claiming
anonymity will be maintained with a pre-printed number

The author seems to take this for granted with this statement; "At the most
practical level, they speak to the benefits of using non-name identification
procedures in testing," but writing a fake name precludes a lot of testing, so
it would be helpful to know if the benefits extend to IDs.

------
cristianpascu
Is anyone aware of studies conducted on differences (if there are any) on how
much time women and men invest in doing something (math, programming,
sciences) in the long run?

I suspect that although there is clearly no reason to believe that women are
less capable than men, there are psychological differences on men's and
women's willingness to spend time on different type of subjects. Also, on how
they evaluate their accomplishments.

Think of the mythical pizza-and-coke-debugging-nights in your own project no-
one will ever use.

~~~
mherkender
> there are psychological differences on men's and women's willingness to
> spend time on different type of subjects

Citation needed? I've spent time with women in science and they seem pretty
dogged in the pursuit of their goals. It seems to me that it has a lot more to
do with cultural norms.

~~~
DanBC
christianpascu is asking for the citation! They made an observation, and asked
if there was any evidence to support that.

~~~
glomph
Making a sexist remark and asking for someone else to provide the evidence is
not acceptable.

~~~
DanBC
I gently agree, except they did qualify their sexist remark. They are saying
"This might be wrong; I don't have anything to support it; is there anything
to support it?" which is a lot better than saying "Women can't do X because Y.
Prove me wrong."

> I suspect that although there is clearly no reason to believe

and

> Is anyone aware of studies conducted on differences _(if there are any)_

[emphasis added]

------
kenster07
There was an article posted to Hacker News about the gender difference in
learning yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971356)

It made clear that boys and girls are motivated by different factors when
learning. So I have a problem when I read this article and the first line is:

"There's an _unfounded_ gender stereotype that says women aren't as good at
maths as men."

Someone may have taught this writer that opening up with something
"controversial" makes for good prose, but I think it just undermines the
purpose of the article. There are plenty of statistics that show that
technical fields, including math, are heavily male-dominated. Why would
someone post something in hacker news that basically implies that this history
is not real?

This gender gap certainly may not be because of latent gender differences in
potential math skill. But if on average, women tend to be less interested in
math, they will reach their mathematical potential less often. And based on
the article I linked above, there are at least statistical differences between
the motives of male and female students.

~~~
kaitai
You've just confused motivation, learning style, and competence in your
comment. The article yesterday could be considered to be about _learning
style_ (it is certainly about the ability of eight-year-olds to sit still).
The gender gap in technical fields is heavily influenced by _societal views_
\-- in 1984 37% of computer science majors in the US were female, and it's
been declining ever since, and in Malaysia women are (close to?) outnumbering
men in CS/IT. And then you discuss _motivation_ , which is different. I don't
believe it was discussed in a scientific way in the Atlantic article, although
it has been studied elsewhere.

Your comment fails to address the point of the study. Women who take someone
else's name do better on math tests. Since they didn't magically change their
genetic makeup or knowledge base in minutes, the implication is that
unconscious beliefs are influencing performance. No one has "implie[d]
statistics are unfounded"; you've simply conflated several separate issues.

You are correct that if "women tend to be less interested in math, they will
reach their mathematical potential less often." Today's post, though, reveals
that it's not all about interest or motivation.

------
laumars
edit: it's been pointed out that I misread the part of the article where it
stated that men's performance under the alias didn't improve. My apologies.
However to keep the flow of the thread I've kept my original post below:

 _> Research finds the threat comes in two flavours. Women can fear their poor
performance will be used to bolster the "women are weak at maths" gender
stereotype (known as "group-reputation threat"). Or they can fear that their
poor performance will be taken as proof that they conform to the stereotype
("self-reputation threat"). Both can undermine women's ability to fulfil their
true potential._

Surely you can use that same logic to say that men are under the same fears
and pressures to outperform women. Trying to argue a psychological handicap
like the above -where the author cites two contradicting examples that are
dependant on the individual- doesn't seem fair when it's only applied to
women.

The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve. And the
men did still still perform better. So you could also argue that this study
proved that men's true maths skills are unlocked by pretending to be someone
else. Which then leaves me wondering why there's the statistical anomaly in
favour of men (I'm doubly curious as I'd always assumed that the figures would
be the opposite way around, if just because my wife is quite significantly
better at that subject than I)

~~~
shawabawa3
> The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve.

No they didn't.

From the study abstract [1]

"Women who used a fictitious name, and thus had their self unlinked from the
math test, showed significantly higher math performance and reported less
self-threat and distraction, relative to those who used their real names. Men
were unaffected by the manipulation"

    
    
      [1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2012.687012#.UdLyj6xDuKk

~~~
laumars
Ah I must have misread that last sentence. Thanks for the correction

------
lawl
Urgh, the summary says basically nothing and is in my opinion fairly vague.
And I don't feel like paying $37 bucks to read this once. Also:

> The effect was stronger for women who cared more about maths.

No shit? People who are more interested in something are usually better at it?

~~~
pradocchia
> People who are more interested in something are usually better at it?

Yes, but no. It shows that women who care more about math are more sensitive
to the reputation/stereotype effects, presumably because they _do_ care.

------
pfortuny
Ehm....

How about "Women perform better under anonymity." Has maths anything to do
about it?

Really, it does not look like they factored the 'maths' term out.

~~~
mhaymo
Because that's a more general claim which cannot be made from this study, and
may very well be false.

~~~
pfortuny
You are right in some sense but then they should not use the word "maths"
either as if it were general. They should just stick to "one test", which
happened to be "about maths" but who knows if this variable is relevant?

------
aoloe
i'm really not sure that in this case 110 + 70 people sum up to a
representative population.

and if the result are representative, doesn't it rather show, that math-women
tend to care more about how other people see them and math-men care less about
it?

------
wuntee
one of the points in this is:

women perform better under an alias than as their real name.

however, i believe there is a flaw in this assumption/point/theory with the
related data. how can you compare 2 sets of women without a baseline of their
mathematical skills? it seems that they are assuming that both sets of women
(true name and alias name) have are at the same mathematical skillset. i do
not believe that is a fair assumption, especially when the testing set were
all undergrads even more so with a testing set of 110 women.

i would be curious as to see this same test being performed with some sort of
standard or minimum requirement for mathematical knowledge in order to create
that variable as constant as possible.

------
Superleroy
The Artical basically says you work better if not under stress, or am i
missing something?

~~~
shawabawa3
Yes, you are missing everything.

It says _women_ performs better at _maths_ when they don't use their own name.

 _Men_ do not perform any different.

~~~
lcedp
_Men do not perform any different._

I didn't find this statement in the article.

~~~
Goronmon
_In contrast, male performance was unaffected by using another person 's
name._

It's right there at the end of the second-to-last paragraph of the article.

------
bitops
I must say I am impressed! For once, an article on HN on gender that hasn't
deteriorated into something completely pointless and depressing. I am
encouraged again about HN's prospect of being a smart place on the nets.

~~~
Whitespace
If your comment goes to the top of this page, will it have a priming[0] effect
on commenters to have more fruitful discussions?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_\(psychology\))

