Are Men More Rational than Women?

[The Is]

Well I have to say anyone that thinks men are more rational than women must be really really really really bad at observing the outcomes of behaviors, be they 'emotional' or 'detached' in either gender.

To sort of understand my point, think about which gender tends to be comforted, taken care of, supported, courted, and respected more. The only reason women aren't more represented in the workplace is literally an 'old boys club' that represses them. But maybe that is a logical behavior in itself?

(this post is meant to be taken lighthearted, I don't really believe I can say one gender is more rational than another.)

 

[TheAppleCore]

I regret to admit that, as a man, I think that women have better common sense. It seems that men have to spend their lives constructing their 'common sense' ideology from a sort of philosophical approach, whereas women seem to be born with more of it already there.

 

[The Is]

I regret to admit that, as a man, I think that women have better common sense. It seems that men have to spend their lives constructing their 'common sense' ideology from a sort of philosophical approach, whereas women seem to be born with more of it already there.

headshot! It might not even be 'naturally there' but women gain their common sense from the real world instead of a philosophical approach. There are a bunch of studies on this where the men doing the study said women were 'less developed' because of it. of course now views are changing.

 

[toa$t]

you both seem to assume that rationality = common sense. not sure that's the case guys.

 

[ebola?]

We have to ask, why would it be that in our particular culture, men are perceived as more rational, whether they are or not. And then, we need to get on the table what 'rationality' is. Would it be the ability to reasoning abstractly?

ebola

 

[The Is]

you both seem to assume that rationality = common sense. not sure that's the case guys.

Well then why don't you say what you think is the case instead of posting nonsense? Or is actual thought too much harder than glib posturing?

 

[Chimeric]

I think that rationality is closely related to logic & reasoning, while common sense lies in the realm of practicality.

The generalization that men are more rational than women reminded me of the generalization that men are better at math than women. However, the latter generalization is already controversial; here is an article that claims that men being better at math is just a myth: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1826399,00.html

There are probably a lot more factors that influence rationality than gender alone. Examples of these could be upbringing, religion, culture, history, etc. In the Philippines, for example, women today are still expected to be somehow submissive to men, particularly to their husbands (although this has greatly lessened with time).

It is important to take note of this gender stereotype because it is only a result of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. Before the Spanish came to the Philippines in 1521, the Philippines held many, many tribes wherein women and men were practically equal in almost every way. Women could even be the leaders of the tribes, and there were also some roles that only women could hold.

Once the Spanish came into the picture, women were treated as second-class citizens. The education they were given was different from that given to men. They weren't allowed to own land. They were expected to be generally obedient, especially to their husbands.

Like I said earlier, the aftereffects of the Spanish colonization can still be felt today. And I think that their influence has also influenced the society's expectations of men and women.

Anyway sorry for the history bullshit, but the main point of my post is that there is probably much more to consider than gender alone when dealing with the generalizations of men and women's rationality.

 

[Lysis]

Yes, I do think the genders are different in terms of thinking.

In addition to hormones, I think a lot of it has to do with the way we're brought up too. Girls are generally brought up to be caring, to love, be sensitive. Boys are generally taught sports, roughness, survival, etc.

Basically, I think society plays a large role too in how the genders are supposed to react.

I've even tried to be less emotional and more rational to "fix" myself. I've gotten a lot better, but sometimes I just let emotions take over. I think I'm pretty in control of things except with love and stress. Stress puts me in full-time panic mode and love makes me too impulsive.

 

[Binge Artist]

"Women rely more on cognition than physiological, to assess emotion. Men rely more on physiology than cognition to gauge emotion.

What does this mean?
If a man feels good, physically, then he will be happy?
If a woman believes all is "right in the world", then she will be happy?

 

[Psychedelic Gleam]

Gender differences are, in my opinion, atleast 85% culturally created if not an even greater percentage. Gender is taught, gender performance is a personal expression that is MOSTLY learned. The vast majority of differences are not innate to the sexes. Look at the vast diversity of cultures, past and present, men and women easily fill the roles demanded or encouraged of them by a culture. Men can be just as loving/emotional/etc if there is the structural support for such behavior, women can be hard headed cold rational leaders if put in the position to be such a person. The gender binary is a load of shit.

 

[Kul69]

White people are all Dee De Dee De Dee Dee Dee De
Black people are all Doo Do Doo Do Doo Do Do Doo
8(

Hahahahaha.. it's so true!

 

[beamers]

Gender differences are, in my opinion, atleast 85% culturally created if not an even greater percentage. Gender is taught,

Your opinion is wrong. It is PC, but some things in life aren't PC, there are already gender differences in the way foetus' behave in the womb. tell me how they learnt that culturally?
Experiment after experiment has shown how biology can override environment, but not the other way around so much.

Being male has been likened to a mild form of autism, so I'd agree with the premise of the OP.

Whenever women are offered logical solutions to their problems they keep on crying, when they really only want affection. Men value practical considerations, women value sacrifice.

male and female brains are different in their structure and development. This does translate to differing cognitive advantages. One is not better than the other per se, but I'd still rather be male than female.

 

[Kul69]

^^ Why do you think he said 85%? Of course there are some differences but they are more subtle and different than what people would expect.

As others have said saying women are this or men are that is kind of stupid. All people are different.

I have a girlfriend who was brought up in a very "gender free" environment and she is totally emotional. Her sister is completely logical to the point of surpassing even me which is practically impossible. Also, her husband is a completely emotional guy and everyone talks about how they "know he's gay" behind his back. I also have male friends who are completely emotional. I don't see any gender bias when it comes to being logical or emotional. However, culturally it is extremely encouraged to be a certain way based on your sex.

A man who cries and deals with things emotionally will constantly be ostracized and the same goes for a woman who is logical. A man who is emotional is usually referred to as being weak, gay, a sissy, whatever. A woman who is logical is usually referred to as being cold, manipulative, calculating, whatever.

Cultural pressures play into it a lot more than you're realizing. People don't like to be the "weird" person so they'll suppress their tendencies and put on an act. How many people do you think are born gay but suppress those urges or thoughts because of what their family would say or what they think their religion says or their friends or whatever?

Having gone in my life from a very conservative area where all of my male friends were extremely macho types and there was "the gay kid" at my high school that everyone made fun of to living in extremely open minded communities where there's "the straight kid" everyone makes fun of I can assure you the amount of logical women and emotional men has gone way up in the latter.

Honestly when I think about it I know more emotional men than women now and more logical women than men. I'm not joking at all.

 

[beamers]

^^ Why do you think he said 85%? Of course there are some differences but they are more subtle and different than what people would expect.

The evidence says it is 85% biological, if anything. Gender identity and roles are biologically determined too a larger degree. Cultural influence is repeatedly overriden by biological factors (hormones, genes).

There is one queer theory that states that homosexuality results from the hormonal profile of the womb.

As others have said saying women are this or men are that is kind of stupid. All people are different.

You don't read much do you, our brains have a different structure and gender differences in learning have been well documented.

 

[Kul69]

^^ Present evidence, pls.

 

[beamers]

females have superior language skills

Brain structure and chemistry differences in males and females

While women and men struggle to communicate with each other and ponder why they don’t think and react to things in similar ways, science is proving that the differences in our brains may have more serious implications beyond our everyday social interactions.

This is the take home message, not dominance of one over the other, but a better understanding of one another and appreciating our differences.


Gender differences in personality traits Across cultures

Then you have the whole field of evolutionary psychology. Google it, you will have volumes to read.

 

[Kul69]

How does this prove gender differences are 85% biological? It doesn't even address the original question of this thread regarding logical vs emotional.

The biology of the brain is obviously a huge influence on behavior but claiming all women have the same brain or all men have the same brain is ridiculous.

Have you even considered that what parts of the brain develop and how they develop can be related to environmental influence? How do you know that women don't tend to use their brains a certain way because they tend to all be exposed to a certain lifestyle expectation through role models and such? Our brain is extremely fluid. Also, just because women use different parts of their brains than men when performing certain tasks doesn't mean they'll go about that task in a completely different way when it comes to the outside world.

 

[beamers]

Your answer was riddled with logical fallacies and a general misreading of what I SPECIFICALLY said. I can't be bothered taking it apart. No amount of evidence would convince you of gender differences anyway. For each question you asked there is an experiment that shows biology overrides soceital contructs, google is your friend.
I especially enjoy it when people make non-scientific opinionated claims about the brain, like "it's fluid".
You asked for evidence and you got it, don't blame me if you can't interpret data.

Have you even considered that what parts of the brain develop and how they develop can be related to environmental influence?

The question is "have you", show me the data..... i showed you mine. I'm open to new evidence.

wiki:biology of gender

Here's a good general start to the issue and people can branch out from there with the links in the article.

 

[beamers]

Seeing as maths is the language of logic, if one gender were more suited to mathematics then you could provide a proof for the original premise.

So are guys better at maths?

why don't women take up maths courses and maths based degrees (engineering) at college level.......societal influence or simply going for other strengths?

 

[Kul69]

The evidence says [gender differences are]...85% biological

What did I misread?

I especially enjoy it when people make non-scientific opinionated claims about the brain, like "it's fluid".
You asked for evidence and you got it, don't blame me if you can't interpret data.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1119133

In the adult brain, neuroblasts born in the subventricular zone migrate from the walls of the lateral ventricles to the olfactory bulb. How do these cells orient over such a long distance and through complex territories? Here we show that neuroblast migration parallels cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow. Beating of ependymal cilia is required for normal CSF flow, concentration gradient formation of CSF guidance molecules, and directional migration of neuroblasts. Results suggest that polarized epithelial cells contribute important vectorial information for guidance of young, migrating neurons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_synapse#Overview

Neurotransmitter release

The release of a neurotransmitter is triggered by the arrival of a nerve impulse (or action potential) and occurs through an unusually rapid process of cellular secretion, also known as exocytosis: Within the presynaptic nerve terminal, vesicles containing neurotransmitter sit "docked" and ready at the synaptic membrane. The arriving action potential produces an influx of calcium ions through voltage-dependent, calcium-selective ion channels at the down stroke of the action potential (tail current).[2] Calcium ions then trigger a biochemical cascade which results in vesicles fusing with the presynaptic membrane and releasing their contents to the synaptic cleft within 180µsec of calcium entry.[2] Vesicle fusion is driven by the action of a set of proteins in the presynaptic terminal known as SNAREs.

As calcium ions enter into the presynaptic neuron, they bind with the proteins found within the membranes of the synaptic vesicles that allow the vesicles to "dock." Triggered by the binding of the calcium ions, the synaptic vesicle proteins begin to move apart, resulting in the creation of a fusion pore. The presence of the pore allows for the release of neurotransmitter into the synapse.[3]

The membrane added by this fusion is later retrieved by endocytosis and recycled for the formation of fresh neurotransmitter-filled vesicles.

Receptor binding

Receptors on the opposite side of the synaptic gap bind neurotransmitter molecules and respond by opening nearby ion channels in the postsynaptic cell membrane, causing ions to rush in or out and changing the local transmembrane potential of the cell. The resulting change in voltage is called a postsynaptic potential. In general, the result is excitatory, in the case of depolarizing currents, or inhibitory in the case of hyperpolarizing currents. Whether a synapse is excitatory or inhibitory depends on what type(s) of ion channel conduct the postsynaptic current display(s), which in turn is a function of the type of receptors and neurotransmitter employed at the synapse.

Termination

After a neurotransmitter molecule binds to a receptor molecule, it does not stay bound forever: sooner or later it is shaken loose by random temperature-related jiggling. Once the neurotransmitter breaks loose, it can either drift away, or bind again to another receptor molecule. The pool of neurotransmitter molecules undergoing this binding-loosening cycle steadily diminishes, however. Neurotransmitter molecules are typically removed in one of two ways, depending on the type of synapse: either they are taken up by the presynaptic cell (and then processed for re-release during a later action potential), or else they are broken down by special enzymes. The time course of these "clearing" processes varies greatly for different types of synapses, ranging from a few tenths of a millisecond for the fastest, to several seconds for the slowest.

The strength of a synapse is defined by the change in transmembrane potential resulting from activation of the postsynaptic neurotransmitter receptors. This change in voltage is known as a postsynaptic potential, and is a direct result of ionic currents flowing through the postsynaptic ion channels. Changes in synaptic strength can be short–term and without permanent structural changes in the neurons themselves, lasting seconds to minutes — or long-term (long-term potentiation, or LTP), in which repeated or continuous synaptic activation can result in second messenger molecules initiating protein synthesis, resulting in alteration of the structure of the synapse itself. Learning and memory are believed to result from long-term changes in synaptic strength, via a mechanism known as synaptic plasticity.

Let's see we have neurons being moved around the brain by a fluid until cells guide them to where they're "needed." We also have synapses that constantly attach and break away unless repeated path activation occurs resulting a permanent structural change.

This is why "habits" are formed and hard to break. There are literally permanent neural changes that occur as a result of repeated activation of specific pathways. If you stop activating the pathway it will begin to break down.

This is why I said it is extremely fluid but not completely fluid.

You asked for evidence and you got it, don't blame me if you can't interpret data.

From your first link...

"One possibility is that boys have some kind of bottleneck in their sensory processes that can hold up visual or auditory information and keep it from being fed into the language areas of the brain," Burman said. This could result simply from girls developing faster than boys, in which case the differences between the sexes might disappear by adulthood.

From your second link...

Researchers do not understand the implications of these differences yet

Your third link...

Linking me to a 10 page research paper and saying "have fun" isn't exactly a good way to make an argument.

However, the article focuses on things like asking women what kind of personality they have and asking men what kind of personality they have. This is easily influenced by environmental conditioning. It tries to draw out information that extends beyond social conditions by asking people from multiple cultures. Well, I hate to say it but I doubt it included cultures like the PKK Kurdish women in Iraq or similar cultures where women have become "warrior like" and decided they don't need their men to do anything for them.

Anyway, from the article...

Social psychological theorists argue for more proximal and
direct causes of gender differences. The social role model (Eagly,
1987) explains that most gender differences result from the adoption
of gender roles, which define appropriate conduct for men and
women. Gender roles are shared expectations of men's and women's
attributes and social behavior, and are internalized early in development. There is considerable controversy over whether gender
roles are purely cultural creations or whether they reflect
preexisting and natural differences between the sexes in abilities
and predispositions (Eagly, 1995; Geary, 1999).
A rather different example of a social psychological approach is
the artifact model (Feingold, 1994) that explains gender differences
on personality scales in terms of method variance. Social
desirability bias may lead men and women to endorse genderrelevant
traits, and some traits (such as fearfulness) may be less
undesirable for women than for men.
These explanations are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely
possible that social roles and other environmental influences can
modify a biologically based pattern, and there is always a danger
that findings from any single method of measurement will be
biased.

And your last link...

Differences... Brain...

However, both neuronal cell bodies (grey matter) and axons (white matter) are essential to the function of the nervous system, so the functional implication of having more of one or the other is not clear.

Aptitude...

A number of studies have looked for sex differences in the brain that might relate to sex differences in intelligence or performance on different tasks. These studies have included measures of total brain size, relative amounts of grey and white matter, and a wide variety of measures of brain activity patterns (Sex and Intelligence). However, findings of sex differences in the brain do not answer the Nature versus Nurture controversy raised again by Summers' comments, because studies of neuroplasticity show that the brain can be altered by experience.

A review of the elementary and secondary education achievement data included in this report from NAEP found that females in all racial/ethnic groups scored higher, on average, than males in reading, writing, and civics. There was an advantage found in science for Hispanic and White males. In mathematics, essentially no differences between males and females were found.

Take the "elementary and secondary education" part above in combination with the first study you linked which found that the reason women process language differently could be due to developing faster and might not exist at adult ages.

Continuing on.. Aggression..

Campbell goes on to state that "cultural interpretations have 'enhanced' evolutionarily based sex differences by a process of imposition which stigmatises the expression of aggression by females and causes women to offer exculpatory (rather than justificatory) accounts of their own aggression."

Finished. Have some more sources?

And hey maybe you should actually find something you want to point on in those sources instead of using the ridiculous tactic of posting a bunch of sources and saying, "Here, it's there somewhere.. go look for yourself."