Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

by Cordelia Fine

psychologists Anne Koenig and Alice Eagly used the IPT to explore the idea that the gender stereotype of women’s superior social skills might furnish women with an unfair advantage.25 To one group, the test was accurately described as a measure of social sensitivity, or ‘how well people accurately understand the communication of others and the ability to use subtle nonverbal cues in everyday conversations.’ Before the participant took the test, the experimenter casually mentioned that ‘We’ve been using this test for a couple of quarters now. It’s 15 questions long and, not surprisingly, men do worse than women.’ In this group, the men did indeed do slightly worse than the women. But to a second group of participants, the test was described in a more gender-neutral way. It was presented as a measure of complex information processing, or ‘how well people process different kinds of information accurately.’ In this group, the men performed just as well as the women.

I want to make an app that just gives you motivational messages every time you're about to do something. "Did you know that women are usually 10% better at driving than me?" or "We find that women are significantly better at wage negotiations than men."