The picture that reveals why men and women's brains really ARE different: The connections that mean

[*GG*]

girls are made for multi-tasking 12/2/13 Daily Mail (UK)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...tasking-But-women-hard-wired-juggle-jobs.html

GG

 

[Snow Leopard]

The idea that women are inherently better at multitasking is currently disputed in the scientific literature and is most likely a myth...

By the way, the actual article doesn't discuss "multitasking" at all, it seems the media are having a bit of fun and making up claims as they usually do...

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/27/1316909110.abstract

It is an interesting study, but the findings are not strong enough for them to be able to accurately distinguish between a female and male brain with high specificity and sensitivity.

 

[Iquitos]

And they casually mention the fact that this imaging does not tell us whether those brains got that way because of cultural conditioning or genetics or what. As usually, they want to emphasize the differences and ignore the similarities between male and female, and the huge overlap of commonality amongst individuals.

 

[Mya Symons]

I remember my socially teacher talking about something similar. Evidently, they did some experiments. They had women and men go into a room and sit down for a few minutes. They did not tell them what the study was about. When they came out, they asked them each to name what they saw in the room. The women remembered much more about the room and the objects in the room than the men. Then they took both men and women to an underground tunnel system individually. They asked them to go North, South, East or West or head towards a familiar landmark above ground. The men more than the women went in the correct direction. Somehow they connected this to women's brains being more multitask orientated and men's brains being more spatial or some such thing. My instructor thought it had something do with men being hunters for thousands of years (they had to travel long distances and find their way back) and women being gathers (they had to remember where the best plants were and what was poisonous and not poisonous AND take care of the children at the same time).

 

[SilverbladeTE]

obviously we DID evolve to fit roles in our ancestors lifestyles over vast time
but, Humans are a *spectrum*, in all ways, we just have potential predispositions is all

Men are larger, have better hand eye coordination, have more tendency to psychopathic *traits*, because that was good for our ancestors way of life.
Men were indeed "spear chuckers", please note that psychopathic traits in small doses, were good for our ancestors: fearlessness, risk taking, promiscuity, long as it didn't go too far into outright sociopathy or psychopathy, those were useful, such men would jump in front of a mammoth to save others, explore dangerous areas, mate with varying women for genetic diversity and widows etc.
however, I believe when Humankind settled down, psychopaths got unchained, tribes would probably kill or exile such folk, and most are result of childhood abuse, a thing more common in cities because its easily hid etc etc

women have much stronger immune systems to protect child bearers who're essential for the tribe, men can impregnate many women so loss of a man is no big deal, evolution wise, hence men are also far more genetically variable, men are more likely to be morons or geniuses, women are more likely to be around norms and have stable personalities
women usually would be the core of the group, men ranged and guarded, women crafted and had huge role in running the tribe, men form quick pecking orders which are good for hunting/exploring, but bad for mediation or working out more complex problems
burdened by childcare and crafting/running things, women got better at multitasking, men, doing single tasks which were often dangerous, got very single minded.

that is simple logic backed by fact, but, again, it is a spectrum, people vary very much in all ways.
problem is our bloody societies are so crap and I believe, warped to fit the desires of psychopaths who've been our rulers too often, that divergence wasn't accepted and the "rule of the strong" became normal which is very bad for everyone.

I don't care who leads, long as they ain't a scumbag, pig-headed or stupid: boobs or balls, big deal

 

[Snow Leopard]

There are (on average) gender related differences in behaviour, but it is important not to overstate the differences.

The thing is, most studies do not find gender related differences when it comes to multitasking. Example:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10683-012-9318-8
"Finally, our results do not support the stereotype that women are better at multitasking. Women suffer as much as men when forced to multitask and are actually less inclined to multitask when being free to choose."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1624/abstract (Which found that men had higher multitasking ability, apparently mediated by videogame experience. I think this study may suffer from participant selection bias...).

http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/M_Kane_Measuring_2012.pdf
(Very little to no differences in complex span memory tasks in a large sample of over 5000 participants).

 

[Dolphin]

I used to notice myself that I didn't like to multitask. I initially put this down to my gender. Now, I think it's much more likely due to ME/CFS (which was undiagnosed for years). So I find it difficult to make personal observations on the issue.