In Cordelia Fine ’s fresh Holy Writ Delusions of Gender , she debunks the “ neurosexist ” myth of evolutionary psychological science . In the process , she explores the neuroscience behind why male and distaff learning ability might be different – and why they might not .
In this excerpt from her Koran , Fine preface us to some insidious myth about the indispensable differences between male and distaff brainiac .
My hubby would probably like you to know that , for the sake of my inquiry for this chapter , he has had to put up with an tremendous lot of contemptuous snorting . For several weeks , our normally quiet hour of read in layer before light out became more like dinnertime in the pigsty as I worked my way through popular Quran about gender divergence . As the result of my enquiry , I have come up with four basic pieces of advice for anyone considering incorporating neuroscientific findings into a popular Christian Bible or clause about gender : ( 1 ) unless you have a time machine and have visited a future in which neuroscientists can make rearward inferences without the shrewish anxiety that keep the more serious-minded of them awake at night , do not suggest that parents or teachers deal boy and girl otherwise because of difference follow in their brain ; ( 2 ) if you do n’t know what a reverse inference is , read the previous chapter of this leger ; ( 3 ) exercise extreme carefulness when making the perilous saltation from brainiac structure to psychological social occasion ; and ( 4 ) do n’t make stuff up .
When it comes to selecting instance from those who have failed to be one or more of these four simple rules , one ’s choice bristle . perhaps my favorite illustration of a self - serving projection of preconception onto mentality jargon is a department in John Gray ’s Why Mars and Venus Collide in which he discourse the substandard parietal lobe ( IPL ) . In men , say Gray , the left IPL is more developed , while in women it is the right side that is large . It will be no surprise to anyone , I am sure , to learn that “ [ t]he left side of the brain has more to do with more one-dimensional , reasonable , and rational persuasion , while the correct side of the mind is more excited , feeling , and nonrational . ” But it is over-the-top just how differently the IPL serve its master and its schoolma’am . According to Gray a man ’s large left-hand IPL , being involve in the “ perception of sentence , ” explains why he becomes raring with how long a woman talks . By contrast , the IPL also “ allows the mentality to process information from the senses , specially in selective tending , like when women are able to respond to a sister ’s crying in the night . ” Perhaps by choice , we are leave behind in the dark as to whether the virile deficient parietal lobe enable a valet to do the same .
In Leadership and the Sexes , Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis inform executive that “ women ’s brains tend to link more of the emotional activity that is pass on in the midriff of the brain ( the limbic system ) with thoughts and quarrel in the top of the brain ( the cerebral pallium ) . Thus a humanity might take many hours to serve a major emotion - laden experience [ I . . . just . . . got . . . fired . . . . I . . . am . . . sad . . . and . . . raging . ] , whereas a woman may be able to process it quite quickly [ Oh , crap ! ] . ” A further neurophysiological disadvantage for men may be find in another of Gurian ’s Book , What Could He Be think ? Implicitly drawing on a working metaphor of The Brain as Pinball Machine , he explains how in man the “ signal ” of an aroused feeling , having made it to the right hemisphere , “ may well get stopped , disappearing into neural oblivion because the signaling found no access to a receptor in a language center in the left side of the brain . ” This does n’t happen in the distaff brain because , according to Gurian , while men have just one or two language center in the left cerebral hemisphere , women have as many as seven such centre , dotted all over the brain , as well as a 25 percent larger corpus callosum . ( Despite this plethora of neurologic riches , the line Gurian draw between virile and female encephalon role leaves me dumb . ) And so , in human beings , a feeling signaling is much less likely to hit the kitty of contact with a nerve cell demand in language .
We also discover in Leadership and the Sexes that when a cleaning lady drawing card ask her colleague , “ What do you all think ? ” this is a typically distaff “ white thing ” question . It seems that white matter is n’t just involved in integrating information from different parts of the brain , but also from different mass in the spot . Brain differences may also be behind a female - leadership problem - solving style : when a female leader “ knows what to do , she ’s not as worried as a man might be about raise it with information . ” Gurian and Annis suggest that “ [ o]ne reason for this intuitiveness may be that she has a larger corpus callosum connecting both hemispheres of the brain . ” By contrast , male leaders favour a problem - solving style that , in part , “ relies on more linear data and cogent evidence . ”
Perhaps my own principal sum callosum runs to a smaller size than the standard distaff issue , but I encounter these intuitive saltation from mental capacity construction to psychological role unconvincing , as noted in the late chapter . Why should arriving at a solution to a problem through an analysis of data and proof want any less integration between hemispheres ? As an example of just how incorrect our intuitions can be in these matters , despite the popular premiss that a more lateralized brain will be worse at multitasking , neurobiologist Lesley Rogers and her colleagues found on the button the antonym to be the case in doll . Chicks with more lateralized brains were skilful at at the same time pecking for food grain and search out for predator ( the established chick equivalent of fry a steak while lay down a salad ) .
But despite these forewarnings , when I make up one’s mind to come up Brizendine ’s claim that the distaff mastermind is wired to empathise , it even so proved to be an practice session that turn up surprise after surprise . I tag down every neuroscience written report cited by Brizendine as grounds for womanly favorable position in mind reading . ( No , really , no motive to give thanks me . I do this sort of affair for pleasure . ) There were many such references , over just a few Sir Frederick Handley Page of textual matter , creating the impression it was no mere ruling , but scientifically establish fact , that the female brainiac is wired for empathy in a manner that the male brain is not . Yet fact - checking give away the deployment of some rather misleading practices . For example , lease ’s form our way through the eye of page 162 to the top of page 164 in her record book . We complain off with a study of clinical psychologist , which found that therapists train a good rapport with their customer by mirror their actions . Casually , Brizendine notes , “ All of the healer who showed these response happened to be womanhood . ” For some reason , she fails to mention that this is because only distaff therapists , select from phone directories , happened to be recruited for the study .
Brizendine ’s next claim — that girls have an advantage in understanding others ’ feelings — does get support in the study of Erin McClure and Judith Hall , which she bring up . These researchers both conducted meta - analyses that found advantages for female in decode gestural look of emotion . The bound is , however , moderate . McClure ’s meta - analysis suggests that about 54 pct of girl will perform above average in facial emotion processing , compared with 46 pct of boys . Hall ’s review of inquiry with tests such as the PONS gestural decoding task ( which we encountered in Chapter 2 ) suggest that if you haphazardly take a boy and a girl , over and over , more than a third of the time the son would outperform the girl . Brizendine does not understate these finding , then , when she tell that “ [ g]irls are years ahead of boy ” in these abilities . She then speculates that mirror neurons may consist behind these acquirement , enabling girls to observe , imitate , and mirror the nonverbal cues of others as a manner to intuit their flavour . ( Mirror neuron are neurons that respond to another animal ’s natural action as though the creature - beholder itself were acting . Some scientists think that mirror neurons may put up the neural grounding for empathise people ’s thinker . Other scientists are doubtful about the whole concept . ) The study she cites here does research the likely role of the mirror system in intuiting others ’ mental states — but not specifically in female . Indeed , its participant ( some of whom had autism - spectrum disorderliness ) were all male .
A little later , readers are told that “ brain - imaging studies show that the mere act of observing or imagining another person in a particular emotional nation can mechanically set off like brain form in the observer - and females are especially sound at this kind of emotional mirroring . ” Cited as support for this feminine superiority in worked up mirroring is a 2004 neuroimaging study by cognitive neuroscientist Tania Singer and confrere , who liken genius activation when someone was either invite a painful galvanic shock to the hand or was aware that a loved one was receiving the same painful electric stupor to the helping hand . Isaac Merrit Singer and colleagues found that some psyche regions were activated both by being shocked and watching someone else be shocked . If you think I ’m going to be nitpicky about what any sex deviation in activation in this cogitation mean , you ’re haywire . Actually , the problem of rendering is rather more basic . Only char were scanned .
go on the motif of woman ’s particular sensitivity to the pain of others in the next paragraph , Brizendine informs us that when a woman , for object lesson , responds empathically to the stubbed toe of another , she is “ establish an uttermost form of what the distaff Einstein does course from puerility and even more in maturity - experience the pain of another mortal . ” Brizendine marshals two useable neuroimaging studies as supporting for this claim . The first is Singer ’s 2004 survey of female ’ empathic responses to pain in the neck . The second is a study by Tetsuya Iidaka and colleague , who asked player to judge the gender of faces showing positivistic , negative , or neutral verbalism . They compared mastermind activations in new versus old participants , but not in female person versus male person . ( Her third citation is a brushup of anxiety and imprint in childhood and adolescence . It does n’t discuss responses to others ’ painful sensation , or gender difference in this capacity , although the authors notice that “ [ b]ecause females are known to be more emotionally responsive than Male to the trouble of others , a wider range of interpersonal contexts may conjure them . ” )
In the last part of this varlet range , Brizendine describes Singer ’s 2004 study , and states that “ the same pain areas of [ the women ’s ] brains that had activated when they themselves were scandalise fall up when they learned their partners were being powerfully shocked . ” She references the Singer 2004 study here , naturally , but also another functional neuroimaging study by the same research squad , published in 2006 . This study was similar , but instead of being a romantic mate who was shock , it was a confederate who had played either jolly or unfairly in a game just before . In this study , both men and women were run down . Again , empathy - related responses were seen in reaction to the painful sensation of another , although in manpower this was only the display case when the partner in crime had play fairly . Having referenced these two studies , Brizendine concludes that “ [ t]he women were feel their partner ’s pain . . . . Researchers have been unable to elicit similar mind answer from men . ” She has , however , just cited a study that did elicit alike psyche responses from man , albeit only in response to mass they like .
By this stage the reader may have a poor opinion indeed of the manful neurological capacity for empathy - peculiarly since in the beginning on in the chapter Brizendine propose that female may have more of the neuron that enable mirroring . She write that “ [ a]lthough most of the studies on this matter have been done on primate , scientists speculate that there may be more mirror neurons in the human female brain than in the human male person brain . ” Look to the notes at the back of the book and no few than five scholarly book of facts come out to assert this claim . The first survey is in Russian . Although it did compare the sexes , from the abstract I would set a substantial bet on it not declare oneself much insight into gender difference in mirror neurons , as it was a postmortem study of neuron characteristic in the frontal lobe . ( One would , I ideate , have to see mirror neurons in action to be able-bodied to identify them . ) Three further study did indeed depend at some aspect of what is thought to be the mirror neuron system . However , none of them compared male person and female , or speculate about possible remainder between the sex . And that leaves just one stay acknowledgment , which is “ personal communication ” with Harvard - based cognitive neuroscientist Lindsay Oberman , entitled “ There may be a difference in virile and female mirror neuron work . ” When I e-mail Dr. Oberman to support , to my surprise , she informed me that not only had she never communicated with Brizendine , but run on to write that , “ to the reverse , I have bet at many of my cogitation and have not found evidence for better mirror neuron functioning in female . ” ( Once you ’ve pick your jaw up off the storey , do n’t forget to in brief think about the 5 percent rule I mentioned in Chapter 12 , in which only sex differences get reported . )
What is deliciously wry about all of this is that Brizendine presents herself as the reluctant but fearless courier of truth :
In write this leger I have struggled with two vox in my heading — one is the scientific true statement , the other is political correctness . I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness even though scientific truth may not always be welcome .
When I am in the mood to be irked , I flip through Brizendine ’s Good Book . Perhaps because of the particular stage of life I fall out to be in , I found myself most enrage by her claim that only when “ the tyke leave alone plate , the mommy nous circuits are eventually free to be applied to young ambitiousness , new thoughts , new ideas . ” But it ’s the sexism that bursts through the door of preschools and schools , cleverly mask in neuroscientific finery , that I find most disturbing . As neuroimaging ask its first step on the long journey to understanding how neural firing yields mental ability , you will encounter no shortage of so - holler expert willing to explicate the educational conditional relation of difference in boy wiring and girl wiring . The medal for the most extortionate claim must surely go to an American educational speaker . According to reports transport to Mark Liberman ’s Language Log , this educational consultant has been inform audience that girl see the point while boy see the bounteous picture because the “ crockus ” — a realm of the brain that does not subsist — is four clip larger in girl than in boys .
I should assure you that most people who spill about the educational implications of sexuality differences in the brain do limit themselves to regions recognized by the majority of the scientific residential district . I also have little doubt that many of them have the very skilful intentions behind their use of the Einstein science lit . They want to ameliorate educational event for children of both sexes . Those who promote undivided - sexual urge school may certainly have honest reason for their cause that have nothing to do with the brain . But promote that grounds by projecting sexuality stereotype onto Einstein data is worse than useless .
Perhaps the most influential of this group of educational speakers is Leonard Sax of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education ( NASSPE ) , and source of two Word of God that contend a brain - based indigence for single - sex schooling . Sax has a punishing speak docket , that so far has include the United States , Canada , Australia , and New Zealand , as well as countries in Europe — and some schools are clearly impressed . NASSPE has been involved in about one-half of the 360 single - sex public school programs in the United States , and Sax has told New York Times journalist Elizabeth Weil that about 300 of them “ are coming at this from a neuroscience basis . ” allow ’s take a closer feeling at what that means .
Take English class , for good example . In the daughter ’ family , you will find teachers asking their students to reflect on story protagonist ’ tone and motif : how would you feel if ? . . . sort of questions . But not in the boy ’ classroom , because “ [ t]hat question requires boys to link up emotional selective information in the amygdala with language information in the intellectual cortex . It ’s like trying to itemise poetry and juggle bowling peg at the same time . You have to apply two different parts of the mastermind that do n’t normally work together . ” The trouble for male child and young children , according to Sax , is that emotion is processed in the amygdala , a primitive , basic part of the brain — “ that form few unmediated connections with the intellectual cortex . ” ( In fact , the amygdala is likely extravagantly interconnect with the intellectual cortex . ) This purportedly renders them incapable of mouth about their feelings . But in older girl , emotion is processed in the cerebral cerebral cortex , which conveniently enable them to hire nomenclature to communicate what they ’re feel . The entailment for teaching are clear : girls to the left , phylogenetically primitive aper - brains to the right wing ! Yet this “ fact ” about male head - variants of which I have seen repeated several prison term in popular medium — is free-base on a small working neuroimaging study in which children star passively at horrific facial expression . It ’s doubtful whether any negative emotion was involved during the study ( except perhaps boredom ) ; the children were not asked to verbalise or babble about what they were feeling and , critically , brain body process was not even measured in most of the area of the genius involve in processing emotion and language . As Mark Liberman has pointed out , “ the disproportion between the account facts and Sax ’s reading is spectacular . ” Even if study did show what Sax claims ( questionable ) , why on earth would we usurp that the nomenclature parts of the brain would n’t get involved if the child wish well to speak ? Shifting information from A to B is , after all , what axons and dendrite are for . Yet Sax describes with admiration a boy - mind - friendly English class in which boys study The Lord of the Flies by reading the text not with an eye on the plot of ground , or depiction , but so as to be able to fabricate a map of the island .
And it ’s all happening at a school near you . At a coeducational schooling in my neighboring suburb , “ parallel instruction ” is render for boys and girls in certain old age . As a diary keeper explains , “ teaching boy [ mathematics ] was more about hands - on practice : drawing , doing the exercise . But in a class with girl , Davey [ the middle school principal ] discusses the issues for a full 10 minutes at the starting signal of the course , while the graph is put in the context of a relationship between two the great unwashed . ” Perhaps Davey has read one of the other “ neurofallacies ” circularise by Sax , that because boy treat math in the hippocampus ( another one of those primitive part of the brain that male so seem to favour ) , but young woman process geometry and mathematics “ in the cerebral cortex ” ( a instruction so broad as to be a bit like saying , “ I ’ll play you for coffee in the Northern Hemisphere ” ) , this indicate a need for very different educational strategy . Sax claim that because the primitive genus Hippocampus has “ no direct connexion to the cerebral cortex ” [ um , again , not quite correct ] boys are felicitous contend with math “ ‘ for its own sake ’ at a much earlier age than girls are . ” But for the daughter , because they ’re using their cerebral cortex , “ you need to tie the math into other high cognitive function . ” The finish of cheer children to get excited about mathematics is for sure admirable . But Sax ’s claim that the results of a neuroimaging study of maze navigation point to a brain - ground need to instruct girl and boys in these dissimilar sort of way of life is simply neurononsense .
Mark Liberman has analyzed in meticulous detail many of Sax ’s dubious brain - based educational claims , and has distinguish the style so - called educational experts like Sax and Gurian use scientific data point as “ shockingly careless , tendentious and even dishonest . Their over - interpretation and mis - interpretation of scientific research is so extreme that it becomes a form of lying . ” While it might be amusing to reckon up romance tale involving stolid Mr. X - Axis and flighty Ms. Y to divert the girl , or an interesting challenge to discuss a book without remark genial state , the peril is that ego - fulfill prophecies are being hand over alongside the new - look , single - sexuality curriculum .
Vicky Tuck , while president of the daughter ’ School Association , UK , recently argued that there are “ neurologic differences ” between the sexes that are “ say in adolescence . ” The practical implication ? “ You have to teach girl differently to how you teach boys . ” Is she right ? think of how easily specious findings of sex differences can lead to untimely speculation . Remember what Celia Moore and Geert De Vries have pointed out - sex differences in the brain can be compensation , or a unlike track to the same goal . Bear in psyche that neuroscientists are still dispute over the appropriate statistical analysis of highly complex data . hark back that many sex difference in the brain may have more to do with brain size than sex per se . Remember that psychology and neuroscience — and the style their finding are report — are geared toward finding difference , not similarity . Male and female brains are of line far more similar than they are unlike . Not only is there generally great overlap in “ male person ” and “ female ” patterns , but also , the male brain is like nothing in the world so much as a female brain . neuroscientist ca n’t even tell them aside at the case-by-case story . So why focalise on difference ? If we concentrate on similarity , we ’d conclude that boys and girls should be teach the same agency .
You ’re not confident ? You palpate certain these brain dispute must be educationally important ? Okay , all right . break your boys and girls . Or , if you need to be really thorough , because there is overlap with these sex differences , stringently mouth one should provide separate streaming for , say , Large Amygdalas and Small Amygdalas , or Overactivated versus Underactivated Left Frontal Lobes . And now tell me how you sew your teaching to the size of the amygdala , or to patterns of brain activity to a photo of a fearful case . There is no dependable style to translate these brain differences into educational strategy . It is , as philosopher John Bruer has poetically put it , “ a bridge too far ” : “ Currently , we do not know enough about brain development and neural function to link that agreement directly , in any meaningful , defendable way to instruction and educational practice . We may never know enough to be able to do that . ” And so , or else , we speedily find ourselves fall back on god - awful gender stereotypes .
We never seem to learn .
No discussion of the nous , sexual activity , and breeding would be over without mention of the now - notorious theory of Professor Edward Clarke of the Harvard Medical School . In his extremely successful nineteenth - century book , Sex in Education ( subtitled , more or less ironically as it turned out , Or , A Fair Chance for young lady ) , he proposed that cerebral British Labour Party commit energy rushing hazardously from ovary to brain , peril fertility as well as causing other spartan medical ailment . As life scientist Richard Lewontin drily remarked of this hypothesis , “ Testicles , ostensibly , had their own reservoir of zip . ” From our innovative vantage point we can laugh at the prejudice that give ascent to this hypothesis . Yet we may have little crusade for self-complacency .
Tuck says she has “ a hunch that in 50 yr ’ time , maybe only 25 , hoi polloi will be double over up with laughter when they watch docudrama about the history of education and discover citizenry once think it was a estimable thought to civilise adolescent boy and girls together . ” But when I survey the democratic lit , I surmise that this will not be where the mass of the time to come will find their biggest laugh . honestly , I recall they will be too busy giggle in astonished scandalization at the claim of early twenty - first - C commentators who , like their 19th - hundred predecessors , reinforced sexuality stereotypes with gross comparisons of male or female brains ; or who , like Brizendine with her talking of “ overloaded nous circumference , ” attempted to turn up social pressures in the brain . ( Here it is , Michael ! I finally discover the neural racing circuit for unionize tyke care , plan the eventide repast , and insure that everyone has clean underwear . See how they crowd out these circuits for life history , ambition , and original thought ? )
you could purchase Delusions of Gender fromW.W. Norton Books .
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