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| Y-axis is response times for a cognitively demanding task. Lower is better. |
A caveat: the participants were in late adolescence. The authors of the paper acknowledge that the effect probably decreases with age.
Women aren't immune to mixed-sex cognitive impairment, either. A new study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly shows how an "objectifying gaze" by men can lower women's math performance:
As hypothesized, the objectifying gaze caused decrements in women’s math performance but not men’s. Interestingly, the objectifying gaze also increased women’s, but not men’s, motivation to engage in subsequent interactions with their partner. Finally, the objectifying gaze did not influence body surveillance, body shame, or body dissatisfaction for women or men.Since the circumstance tested in this paper (an objectifying gaze) is less common than that of the first paper (a five minute long conversation), we can tentatively conclude that women are less susceptible than men to mixed-sex cognitive impairment.
3 comments:
I can only access the abstract. I'm curious whether the study controlled for sexuality, since attractiveness seemed to be a factor. For example, how do gay men react to same- and opposite-sex conversation?
That's a good question. The article makes no mention of sexuality.
Julia here, from today's Less Wrong meetup.
You've ignored something interesting here, which is that men do worse and women do a bit *better* in mixed-sex interactions. Which contradicts what I've been told about women's education. I don't have a good theory about why it might be.
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