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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1264 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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What physiological/psychological advantages do women have over men? The only solid ones I can think of off the top of my head are a better immune system, greater flexibility, and greater conscientiousness. I've also seen some stuff about more acute color vision, more efficient use of fat stores during endurance activity, and better scores on verbal/memory IQ subtests, though I haven't investigated those as thoroughly.

  1. Better people skills, at least in the sense of tact, curtesy and reading body language. Male charisma is its own thing but in the median social situation, women are better.

  2. Relatedly, better memories about personal and biographical information. I've noticed that my wife and female colleagues are much better at remembering stuff about people, whereas me and the men I know are better at remembering stuff about stuff.

  3. Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.

  4. Better at multi-tasking/task-switching. This one is well known.

  5. Definitely more conscientious (at least with certain subtypes of conscientiousness)

  6. More conformist and neurotic. These are more trade-offs than straight advantages, but if you want to avoid big life-ruining screw-ups and danger then they are definitely helpful.

  7. Better fine motor control. Women are faster typists and have neater handwriting.

  8. More organised? I'm less sure about this one but the stereotype of a husband asking his wife where something is and her pointing out that it's right in front of his face is definitely a real thing.

Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.

I'm not sure how true this is, and how much of it is a reflection of interest rather than aptitude. At least even if there's a skew, I don't think it's blatantly obvious.

Better at multi-tasking/task-switching. This one is well known.

I'm pretty sure this is false; pretty much everyone other than rare savants suck hard at multi-tasking/task-switching almost equally.

Better fine motor control. Women are faster typists and have neater handwriting.

Are women faster typists? I think I type faster than every single woman I know.

In any case, I suspect that this stereotype has two components, and the advantage might disappear as soon as these are controlled for:

  • For skills that are learned during formative years, differences in earlier development of girls might lead to e.g. better handwriting; boys that learn handwriting a little later IIRC also have relatively neat writing (I am not entirely certain that this "disproves" superior female fine motor control -- if the boys took longer rather than simply later to be able to learn these properly it would be still be indicative of a difference. Likewise I think girls are quicker to learn to hold chopsticks than boys do very early on in life)
  • For skills involving small components e.g. sewing and knitting, women are smaller generally and have smaller hands and thinner fingers in particular; I think more recent studies have generally shown the increase in motor control in these tasks to be more related to the size of the hands/fingers, with differences disappearing when controlled for (hand/finger) size, implying that this isn't really a difference in neurological control. Though this does still lead to a practical advantage with regards to motor control in daily tasks that matter.

I'm not sure how true (being better at learning foreign languages) is, and how much of it is a reflection of interest rather than aptitude.

Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.

multi-tasking/task-switching

See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.

Are women faster typists? I think I type faster than every single woman I know.

You may well be. It wouldn't shock me if typing speed was affected by greater male variance. But nonetheless, 82.5% of court stenographers are women. When typist was a job, it was a woman's job. Secretaries (who do/did lots of typing) are almost all women. I don't think these are coincidences.

Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.

I agree with this, I just am unsure about how it translates to learning foreign languages in particular -- at least to the extent that the effect size is huge.

See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.

A brief perusal of pubmed gives me much more mixed results. I'm not convinced.

The world's top polyglots seem to be male, but on average women are pretty clearly more verbal than men. So maybe greater male variability hypothesis comes into play?

I wouldn't disagree, it's just the phrasing of the original reply:

Better at learning foreign languages. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a language class.

Which seems like a stronger observation I have personally observed.

I’ve definitely noticed that among Hispanics, usually women have better English than men.

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