Oh, grocery shopping is a skill, but that article is rather significantly bullshit.

Shopping is a skill that's learned, just like map reading. A thousand years of evolution doesn't teach you to track a fucking donut. Bah. I can tell you where just about anything is in the grocery store I go to, because I've been shopping there for ages. It's a learned skill. You want a donut? Walk in the door, turn right, they're the first thing you'll pass on the left before you hit the veggies. Need milk? Head all the way to the back of the store, turn left, it'll be on the right in the cooler section right after you pass the soy milk, but before you get to the orange juice. Need hamburger? Back right corner of the store. Mexican food? Middle aisle, between the soup aisle and the breakfast aisle.

And, seriously, come on- 45 men and 41 women at six farmer's markets, and you're going to call that a study? What was teh selection method? What were your controls? Were these people who enjoyed shopping or hated it? Were they regular shoppers or not? Were they all asked to find the same things? Was there only one donut shop but lots of lettuce shops?

This whole article just makes me want to strangle someone.

And builders are better at building. It all goes down to education, educate for equality and you will get an equal society.

I'll be expecting a second report: "Women are better at grocery shopping but not at trolley driving, according to The Me(n)chanical Univerity; 'women cannot drive anything' is their motto".

Traditional methods to test navigating talents have neglected to explore the crucial calorific motivation of chocolate, cake and other high calorie foods, he said.

Quoted because it's so ridiculously funny. Along with the comment about how women are great at seeking out the "cream bun," this article seems little more than a great big fat chick joke.

It's bad enough to work as a grad student on a project that has funding troubles; it's worse when you know that this project HAD funding.

The caption of the article's picture "Women's shopping skills may have been honed on the African savannah" is enough to qualify this for Friday humor.

"Why, a lot of this gazelle is just empty calories!"

What the hell does this study wish for its end goal to be, anyway? To make women think that if they suck at shopping, that they're somehow genderly retarded? It does nothing for reinforces this whole what's "natural" bullshit.

When you spend all your life being told that you're supposed to be good at something, and at the same time, practice it because of social expectations, my guess is you're going to get really good at it, unless you're Homer Simpson.

I'll be the first to admit - I shop like an idiot, I don't know where to find certain things, and I grab the first things that I see will taste good - but it has nothing to do with my penis, but because I was never encouraged/expected to be Martha Stewart.

As for map reading - my car has a GPS for a reason.

And to think, I thought the whole Freudian penis-envy bullshit was the most fucked-up study that's faux scientific.

That article was just hilarious. Please someone tell me it was an Onion article that someone posted "seriously" just for kicks. Please?

I'm too lazy to read the study, but I'm curious -- how do they define "better shopper"?

Do they mean being able to go into a store with a list and getting everything that's needed, with reasonable quality without breaking the bank? In which case my mom's a better shopper than my dad or my brother and I.

Do they mean being able to sniff out the best bargains (whether or not we need what's being purchased) on amazingly good quality products at amazingly low prices? In which case my dad is the best shopper I know.

Dang. I just discovered another 'study' involving women and shopping the other day, on the Toronto Star website. It focused on women's shopping habits and how they apparently do not change as women grow older. The cherry on top of this cake? The article concludes with the author of the study stating that she is sure "a study of men could reveal the same results, that the sexes – at least at the mall – are equal."
The link is here .

It's interesting that this study, as well as the color pink one from earlier this week, both rely on a very strange notion of human evolution: that forest apes moved to the savannah and began hunting large game until they eventually evolved into humans.

it's interesting because, and if there's anyone with a stronger background in evolutionary bio than me (I studied Bio but I specialized in population dynamics), that the more recent theory is that humans descended from apes that moved to estuaries and coastal regions.

This makes more sense for several reasons:
1. Humans lack body hair (compared to apes), have fat attached to the skin, and have larynxes capable of holding air, all of which are common mammalian adaptations for living in or near water.

2. The "savannah" of eastern Africa, to which this study refers, is now believed, through geological evidence, to have been underwater at around th time that the oldest human remains found were from.

3. Moving from the forest to the savannah, from a more complex environment to a simpler environment, generally makes animals less intelligent, not more.

4. Hunting large game with complex tools like spears doesn't seem to be something that could evolve all that easily - walking upright, opposable thumbs, dextrosity are all things that don't seem likely to have come together through a random mutation and often enough to actually speciate. An intermediate step, like using rocks as a tool to crack open shellfish, seems to be required.

5. People can swim, the apes we descended from can't.

This all supports the idea that it wasn't "men hunted, women gathered" and that it was more like "everyone gathered". Especially since we're seeing the deleterious effects of too much meat on our health - if we ate 50% meat in "the wild", then why are we so poorly adapted to handle it? Why are our teeth the teeth of scavengers, why are our digestive tracks long like herbivores', not carnivores', and why do we need those omega-3 and 9 fats that are found in fruit, vegetables, and shellfish?

So it's interesting to me that these studies are all like "men hunted big game, women gathered fruits and vegetables" in evolution when, from my understanding of evolutionary biology, the general knowledge is shifting away from that theory.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing - that pink study indicated that the preference for pink arose from a general preference for light blue with a specific preference for red because red's the color of apples. While evolving in Africa. Yep, lots of red apples in Africa, and I can't think of a single red thing that people should avoid eating!

Great.
I'm with Profeministmale. What exactly is the point of this? I'm awfully suspicious of all these "studies" coming out that reinforce "traditional" (i.e. 1950's - as if history only goes back that far) gender roles.

It's like they're saying, "Look, ladies! You ARE the ones who's supposed to do the household chores and grocery shopping! And your men are just not wired to like those pink ties you bought them!"

How much do you want a bet that men print this article to bring home to the wife? "See! I can't help you with the shopping 'cause I'm naturally inept at it!"

UGH.

Why is this in the science section of the paper. Why are we using science to justify our sexist attitudes. This is utter crap.

The way they determined which people were better shoppers was by finding out if they could point accurately to where food was at a freaking farmer's market! It seems to be this would be a study about memory, not about tired hunter vs. gatherer stereotypes.

Alex Blaze,

I'm a biologist of sorts too ... and further removed from human evolution here in biochemistry than you are in population dynamics.

I've heard of this water-ape theory too. Makes sense to me. But as to the health of our ancient diet ... I remember reading that part of what got us using tools was that we could get at bone marrow in that way, thus exploiting a relatively un-exploited niche (only hyenas can get at bone marrow without tools, IIRC). And that our love for sweets/fats has to do with our being evolved to live off of bone-marrow (and fruit).

Our diet, therefore (given how fatty is bone marrow) was not necessarily in any way healthy in the modern sense. But it was loaded with nutrients, both micro and macro ... and it kept us alive long enough to help out with the grand-kids. And that's all you need evolutionarily. As far as evolution was concerned, that we ate a diet that would cause us to keel over of a heart attack at 60 (assuming we had kids at about 20), wouldn't have been a problem, would it?

In the "wild", I think avoiding preditors and disease would have been more of an issue than keeling over at 60 from a heart attack or stroke. But nowadays we would consider a diet that would be so artery clogging to be highly unhealthy, wouldn't we?

I AM a better grocery shopper than my husband...I don't think he understands labels or something!

Book_Grrl, he's faking it. ;)

The researchers obviously missed a lot of things, but it's crazy to me that it didn't occur to them that women are made to feel guilty about high-calorie foods, which is of course going to make their locations memorable. A lot of women have strong emotional reactions to things like doughnuts, tied to guilt and negative body issues. I know I've spent a lot more time and mental energy at the chocolate croissant booth at the farmers market, than at the lettuce booth. At the lettuce booth I think, "I need lettuce; the red looks good." At the chocolate croissant booth I think, "Do I really, really want that? I already can't fit into half my clothes. What else have I eaten today? I had a big dinner last night, maybe I shouldn't. Do they have trans fat? Because that would be worse. God, it's so dumb that I'm standing here, stressing about a croissant." And yeah, I know exactly where the croissants are, because I have this internal debate whenever I go past them. Even when the associations with high-calorie foods are positive, it's often because the food is a reward for other behaviors. And who uses lettuce as a reward?

My mother has no spatial relationships. Outside our neighborhood, she gets turned around if we take one too many turns. My father, on the other hand, a Navy-man himself, can pack a car for five people going away for seven days like it's nothing.

As this applies to shopping, how do you even begin to qualify and measure shopping skills? I agree, Vanessa, it was all a matter of memorization of shopping items. Sheesh. A five-year-old with no kindergarten experience can pull off memory games...

My mother has no spatial relationships. Outside our neighborhood, she gets turned around if we take one too many turns. My father, on the other hand, a Navy-man himself, can pack a car for five people going away for seven days like it's nothing.

As this applies to shopping, how do you even begin to qualify and measure shopping skills? I agree, Mary B, it was all a matter of memorization of shopping items. Sheesh. A five-year-old with no kindergarten experience can pull off memory games...

Here's what I'm confused about. "Evolutionary psychology" tells us that men are attracted to good breeders while women are attracted to good providers, because in the Stone Age men provided for women. Now it's telling us women are the ones who are skilled at finding food. So if women were finding and providing food for themselves (and their men presumably since men apparently don't have the skills to find their own), what exactly were the men providing?

Why am I bothering... it's all nonsense and none of it makes any sense.

I couldn't bear to read it. Did they control for experience?

So it turns out that Classicists are naturally better at reading obtuse Greek syntax than plumbers are. It goes back to our savannah days, when it was necessary for the Classicists of the group to decipher marble inscriptions so they would know which gods to sacrifice to. Otherwise everyone would get hit by lightening.

Can someone with some anthropology experience explain why we assume that men did the hunting and women did the gathering in prehistoric society? It just occurred to me that I've always heard that stated as fact and never heard an explanation for it. Muscle mass, maybe?

UnderZenith: "Here's what I'm confused about. "Evolutionary psychology" tells us that men are attracted to good breeders while women are attracted to good providers, because in the Stone Age men provided for women."

Is that what evolutionary psychologists tell us? Or, rather, that there are a suite of motivations that motivate searches for short-term and long-term mates in men and women, and that the conditions that trip these mechanisms can differ for men and women, and also according past experiences of stress, current hormonal state, etc?

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/haselton_gangestad.pdf

As a side note, men and women contribute roughly equally to food production in hunter-gatherer societies. A recent review showed about 60/40 split. Obviously the source of calories is different (e.g., men provide more big risky game and meat, women provide more small foodstuffs such as plants, small mammals, etc.). So seems to me that ability to provide resources should have been pretty important for both men and women in ancestral history.

I actually think this study is pretty cool!! The news article is disturbing, but I like the actual study. It's from Steve Gaulins lab.

Here is what motivated it:

A) There are few sex differences in cognitive abilities, and the ones that are documented are really small.

B) One of the few exceptions to this is that there is a large sex difference favoring males in spatial navigation/mental rotation tasks, and a medium sex difference favoring females in spatial location memory.

C) However, all these studies are done in the lab. What happens in a more realistic context?

D) Further, derivatives of optimal foraging theory posits that foragers in patchier food environments develop specialized memory systems for food locations with high caloric content.

E) So put that all together, and you can test if the sex differences disappear or reverse in a more naturalistic environment, and whether their is a bias to be attentive to high calorie food sources.

Maggie: Can someone with some anthropology experience explain why we assume that men did the hunting and women did the gathering in prehistoric society?

I think the reason is a bit archaic. I think it tends to go back to traditional ideas about the biological nature of men and women, as a lot of early anthropology and archeological work was very ethnocentric and biased. But when it comes to the Hunter-Gatherer theory its a bit sketchy as to how exactly it worked or whether or not men and women focused more on gathering than hunting. People still argue over it.

I personally think this article is complete bunk and proves what my professors have said, "People will publish/believe anything." To me this seems to be full of flaws. I think we can safely say that more women in this country than men do grocery shopping on a habitual basis to feed their families, more women are home makers, so of course they're going to know where to find something a grocery store. It's not rocket science, especially when there are signs everywhere! Not to mention where this study was taken place and what kind of subculture these people are a part of come into play when considering the results. What age group are we talking? What kinds of eating habits do these people have? Are they married or unmarried? With children? I wonder if any of these things were even taken into account. Why biology or evolution would come to play at all in a habitual and MODERN practice is beyond me.
What's with these crap not-science studies that are trying to prove gender roles are biologically based anyway?

UCLA, I'll change that from "Evolutionary psychology tells us..." to "Sexist assholes and shitty mainstream science reporting claim that evolutionary psychology tells us..." Is that better? Because the nuanced view you present may be that of serious scientists, but it's not the one that is communicated to the general public.

"A lot of women have strong emotional reactions to things like doughnuts, tied to guilt and negative body issues."

That's a really interesting idea!!!

My memory of this study, however, is that they got the same effect for other calorie dense foods that weren't junk food (e.g., nuts, fruits) relative to less calorie dense food (e.g., lettuce).

Can someone with some anthropology experience explain why we assume that men did the hunting and women did the gathering in prehistoric society?

Whelp, I *am* an archaeologist, and the reasons you cited in the rest of your post (ethnographic studies done in the past/present) are exactly why men hunt/women gather is the CW.

I work with sites in midwestern North America and it's very hard to danged near impossible to say what, without a doubt, the labor divisions were between the sexes just from the archaeological data.

"UCLA, I'll change that from "Evolutionary psychology tells us..." to "Sexist assholes and shitty mainstream science reporting claim that evolutionary psychology tells us..." Is that better? Because the nuanced view you present may be that of serious scientists, but it's not the one that is communicated to the general public."

Fair enough. There is definitely a big disconnect between what scientists say and all the caveats that we put in our articles, versus the shocking attention grabbing headline that you see in the news.

I can't tell you how many students come into ev psych class on the first day thinking "men are programmed to spread their seed, women are programmed to just look for resources", which is completely silly.

I'm a Ph.D. student in anthropology with a focus in bioarchaeology.

Alex, the "Aquatic Ape" hypothesis has been completely refuted. Even the original author of that study now says that it was meant to be social commentary, and was not supposed to be taken seriously.

Our best guesses of the environment of early hominins includes mixed forest-savannah areas, with patches of trees in between open grasslands.

Most people assume that (in the past) men were hunters and women were gatherers for two reasons:

1) That's the way it is in most modern/historic foraging societies; and

2) Having small children around really DOES limit one's ability to hunt large game. Before birth control, most women would've had at least one small child most of the time.

This doesn't mean that hunting was ALWAYS done by men, or that all societies forbade women from hunting. It's a generalization. Even in cultures with rigid gender roles, we often find adolescent females engaging in "male" activities. It is after the onset of childbirth that the roles tend to change.

Having said all of that - both this study and the "pink" study are clearly bogus.

I am not opposed to all evo/devo stuff. I think some of the more recent work (especially by Alexander) is intriguing. However, there are a few problems with it in general:

1) The general population does not understand it, and popular articles are often ridiculously over-simplified. Those over-simplifications are often horribly sexist.

2) It has a very shady past, and its past WAS horribly sexist.

3) At its worst, it follows the following rubric:

a) Find a trait that is an ideal aspect of Western culture;

b) Assume that the trait is "universal" throughout the world and throughout history, even if direct evidence does not support your hypothesis;

c) Backtrack to come up with an "evolutionary reason" for this "universal trait's" existence.

That's just bad science - it's simliar to creationism, in that it starts with an unproven end result and seeks only evidence that supports it.

"This doesn't mean that hunting was ALWAYS done by men, or that all societies forbade women from hunting. It's a generalization."

Adding to that, from my studies in anthropology, it's not unusual for women to hunt in some hunter-gatherer societies, it's just that they usually hunt/trap small game, and because it is small game has in the past tended to be overlooked or considered insignificant by researchers.

"My memory of this study, however, is that they got the same effect for other calorie dense foods that weren't junk food (e.g., nuts, fruits) relative to less calorie dense food (e.g., lettuce)."

I don't think it matters. People who want to lose weight avoid high-calorie foods, whether they're avocados or junk food. (More anecdotal evidence: my roommate and I both consider an avocado a treat. Neither of us considers lettuce a treat.) When the researchers can control for the societally-imposed emotional aspect of high-calorie foods, I'll take the results more seriously.

I also don't like that the only measure of nutritional value in the study is calorie density.

JM: "I don't think it matters. People who want to lose weight avoid high-calorie foods, whether they're avocados or junk food. (More anecdotal evidence: my roommate and I both consider an avocado a treat. Neither of us considers lettuce a treat.) When the researchers can control for the societally-imposed emotional aspect of high-calorie foods, I'll take the results more seriously. "

I really do think the counterexplanation that was offered (high emotional saliency of high calorie foods to dieting women) is a plausible one worth investigating.

I don't think you would necessarily need to go to a different country, however. You could recruit people into the study who vary in their dieting history, anxious responses to food, etc. Then either a) see if that makes a difference or b) Statistically control for that in the analyses.

"I also don't like that the only measure of nutritional value in the study is calorie density. "

I'm not sure if that is true. I can't remember whether they said they were simply starting initially with caloric density and then were also going to look at other nutrients, or if they did that as well in this study (haven't read the paper, just remembering it from a conference talk they gave last year).

"One of the few exceptions to this is that there is a large sex difference favoring males in spatial navigation/mental rotation tasks, and a medium sex difference favoring females in spatial location memory."

This flies in the face of my experience.

Is this why men refuse to ask for directions---they fear being perceived as less manly if their spatial navigation/mental rotation abilities are compromised? 8)

I'm better at Mortal Kombat than most men I know, but no one's publishing that.

Would it be safe to assume that even if men did most of the hunting, gathering wasn't strictly a female activity. It makes more sense that BOTH sexes would be involved with gathering food, especially if hunting was limited.

Oh, and my husband like grocery shopping as long as I don't go with him. We have different styles (I actually think about what is the better deal or more desirable, he grabs what he sees first), but the end result is the same.

UCLA: "One of the few exceptions to this is that there is a large sex difference favoring males in spatial navigation/mental rotation tasks, and a medium sex difference favoring females in spatial location memory."

Grace: "This flies in the face of my experience."

That may well be true - different people have different anecdotes. So what happens across studies?

Janet Hyde, who is a big proponent of men and women are basically the same, has reviewed most research on sex differences. One of the few that pops up as large is the mental rotation differences.

To give you an idea of the size of the difference, it is twice as large as the difference in body dissatisfaction between men and women.

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp606581.pdf

brklyngrl asked, "I couldn't bear to read it. Did they control for experience?"
That was my first question, too. It seems like an in-your-face kind of issue, doesn't it? I read it and found the abstract from the scholarly article, but I was unable to find out whether or not they considered experience.

"That may well be true - different people have different anecdotes. So what happens across studies?"

Yes, UCLAbodyimage. I know that I was making an anecdotal comment.

I know, too, Janet Shibley Hyde's study (or meta-study), and I believe the primary difference that she notes is in motor behaviors (specifically throwing distance).

> "So if women were finding and providing food for themselves (and their men presumably since men apparently don't have the skills to find their own), what exactly were the men providing?"

Hmm. I don't see why this question was put in past tense.

Around the world, women still do all the food production, child care, food production, water collection, home health care, cleaning and the rest of it.

That it has been that way for several thousand years still fails to comfort me.

"2) Having small children around really DOES limit one's ability to hunt large game."

It depends on the kind of hunting. Scientific American (I think) had an article about this some years ago. It mentioned that while having a small child along during a "pick one or a few animals and stalk them" kind of hunt would be a drawback, it wouldn't be for the "pick a whole herd of animals and drive them over a cliff or into a net" kind of hunt. The latter would be participated in by most of the community, and having noisy kids along could be a bonus.

I find it amusing that humans have done so much to get away from nature - drive cars, eat packaged food, live in air conditioned boxes - yet when it comes to gender equality we're so obsessed with what's "natural." And the answer is somehow supposed to hold sway over how we form public policy.

Nature and Justice have fuck-all to do with each other. People have rights that extend beyond their natural state of being. Or to put it another way: You can't piss in your neighbor's lawn no matter how bad you have to go.

So why should we care whether gender inequality is backed with millions of years of evolution? It's still unjust.

It's sad that one of the most prominent newspapers in England would run garbage like this.

On the "women shop better" question I think it would be more accurate to say in America and England (among other countries) women are socially conditioned to be shopping oriented from early childhood.

But, that conditioning is mainly focused on getting women to spend a lot of time shopping (because, of course, the more time you spend in a store, the more money you will spend).

I see this when I go grocery shopping every Sunday

I've done my own grocery shopping since I was 22 (I'm 39 now) - I'm single currently but even when I was in a relationship I did my own shopping.

I know exactly what I want, and I grab a shopping cart, zip to the aisles where what I need is stored, get what I want and rush to the cash register.

I once timed myself, and it literally took me about 8 minutes from entering the store to getting in line with my purchases (and I shop at a big supermarket, the Pathmark on 125th and Lexington in Manhattan, which is about 100,000 square feet).

What slows me down is the women, with their shopping carts blocking the aisles, who stand there reading the labels on the products and/or comparing prices so they can save 2 or 3 cents on a can of peas.

A similar phenominon slows me down at the cash register (it takes me 8 minutes to shop but I've spent up to 15 minutes in line at the cash register).

People (usually women) with a whole bunch of coupons and/or people (usually women) bickering with the cashier over 2 or 3 cents in savings.

I find that really irritating - that's why I tend to shop early in the morning or late at night, when the supermarket is empty.

So, based on the time it takes me to shop I'd say I'm a better shopper than most of the women I see in the store, who waste so much time reading labels and bickering with the store clerks over a few pennies.

"I know, too, Janet Shibley Hyde's study (or meta-study), and I believe the primary difference that she notes is in motor behaviors (specifically throwing distance)."

That's the largest difference. But there are a host of others, particularly on sexuality-type variables. The mental rotation difference would be classified as "large" (.75).

Small = .20, medium = .50, large = .80.

Um, no. There were 2 studies on mental rotation. One had a large effect size (.73) and one had a moderate effect size (.56). The one with the large effect size had few participants.

around really DOES limit one's ability to hunt large game."

It depends on the kind of hunting.
It would also depend on the nature of "having small children around," wouldn't it?

We look at that as very confining. Perhaps because it often is in our culture. As I understand it, though, the nuclear family is a rather recent Western invention that was preceded by more cooperative child-rearing practices.

Even having a nursing child looks substantially less confining if you fail to assume that women then did not exclusively nurse their own infants. After all, there have been times in Western history when women would routinely nurse other women's babies.

"Janet Hyde, who is a big proponent of men and women are basically the same, has reviewed most research on sex differences. One of the few that pops up as large is the mental rotation differences. . . . The Gender Similarities Hypothesis)"

I'll reiterate, Janet Shibley Hyde's study concludes that in addition to some attitudes about sex, the only difference of significance between the sexes is in the motor behavior that is used in throwing balls. Attitudes are learned behavior, and throwing a ball may have a large learning component.

I have noticed that when UCLAbodyimage is caught with an erroneous citation or conclusion, he responds puffily with a set of numbers or an 'A B C" list. I've been amused by his ability to bluff in a huff and puff way.

Thanks, Peepers, for being on top of things.

"Um, no. There were 2 studies on mental rotation. "

Um, yes. There were 29 separate studies on mental rotation (see Table 1, p. 583)

"Thanks, Peepers, for being on top of things."

Actually, she/he wasn't.

Peepers stated:

"Um, no. There were 2 studies on mental rotation. One had a large effect size (.73) and one had a moderate effect size (.56). The one with the large effect size had few participants."

Peepers clearly misrepresents the data by suggesting there were "few" participants. The .73 (which I rounded to .75 above) is for mental rotation and is based on a sum of 29 separate studies. How is that "few participants?". This is a large effect by Hyde's categorization (which is based on the widely accepted Cohen 1988 categorization that I mentioned above: .2/.5/.8).

Peepers then tries to imply that I misreported the mental rotation data by pointing out the .56, which peepers claims is for mental rotation. But the .56 is for spatial navigation, not mental rotation. Which, anyways, is a reasonable effect, similar to gender differences in body image (.58).

"I've been amused by his ability to bluff in a huff and puff way."

I would appreciate it if you refrained from claiming that I am misrepresenting things when I am clearly not.

"I'll reiterate, Janet Shibley Hyde's study concludes that in addition to some attitudes about sex, the only difference of significance between the sexes is in the motor behavior that is used in throwing balls."

So there aren't important differences in body dissatisfaction between men and women? Really?

"Attitudes are learned behavior, and throwing a ball may have a large learning component."

I certainly agree that internalization of widespread norms and training have important effects on those behaviors. That does not mean, however, that other evolved systems aren't influencing these attitudes as well.

GREGORY: "On the "women shop better" question I think it would be more accurate to say in America and England (among other countries) women are socially conditioned to be shopping oriented from early childhood."

But the point of the study is not to figure out if women are "better shoppers."

The point of the study is to show, in contrast the well-known effect where women perform worse on mental rotation and spatial navigation tasks, that you can get these differences to disappear or reverse in a more naturalistic context.

"he responds puffily with a set of numbers or an 'A B C" list"

I've noticed that when people don't have a clear counterpoint to an argument, they rely on vague and general statements. Can you provide a specific example?

Ah, yes. I misread the table. Each number refers to a group of studies analyzed, not an individual study. However, the ".56" does refer to mental rotation.

This is getting pretty dull for me this point. Can we please move on?

...at this point...

UCLA WROTE: "The point of the study is to show, in contrast the well-known effect where women perform worse on mental rotation and spatial navigation tasks, that you can get these differences to disappear or reverse in a more naturalistic context."

Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say:

The point of the study is to show that:

A) In contrast the well-known effect where women perform worse on spatial navigation tasks, that you can get these differences to disappear or reverse in a more naturalistic context

B) To test what happens when you create a task simulataneously utilizes skills that men are better at (spatial navigation) and skills that women are better at (location memory)

"Ah, yes. I misread the table. Each number refers to a group of studies analyzed, not an individual study. However, the ".56" does refer to mental rotation."

Ahh.. actually we were both right :-). There are two different listings of mental rotation on Table 1 citing two different meta-analyses.

"This is getting pretty dull for me this point. Can we please move on?"

Sounds good to me. My only point was that there are sizeable sex differences in perfomance on mental rotation tasks, which didn't seem very controversial to me from the outset.

GREGORY: Wowsers, your disdain for women (at least in a grocery setting) just dripped off of every word in that last post.

Really? Because my last boyfriend loved shopping and kicked ass at it. I sat in the car and let him do his thing. The ''science'' of this study is total and utter bullshit, how can anyone believe something like that? Logical thinking would normally dismiss a 'study' like this one...however there seems to be a shortage of that.

Data:
My wife is totally a better shopper than i am... at the grocery store where she usually shops.

But I'm way better a shopper than she is, at the grocery store where I usually shop (because we go shopping from different locations, we tend to use different stores.)

Conclusion:
There is something very strange about my store, which interferes with her natural vagina-linked shopping superiority.

If anyone is interested, this is what the actual study said:

Title: Spatial adaptations for plant foraging: Women excel and calories count.

Abstract

We present evidence for an evolved sexually dimorphic adaptation that activates spatial memory and navigation skills in response to fruits, vegetables and other traditionally gatherable sessile food resources. In spite of extensive evidence for a male advantage on a wide variety of navigational tasks, we demonstrate that a simple but ecologically important shift in content can reverse this sex difference. This effect is predicted by and consistent with the theory that a sexual division in ancestral foraging labour selected for gathering-specific spatial mechanisms, some of which are sexually differentiated. The hypothesis that gathering-specific spatial adaptations exist in the human mind is further supported by our finding that spatial memory is preferentially engaged for resources with higher nutritional quality (e.g. caloric density). This result strongly suggests that the underlying mechanisms evolved in part as adaptations for efficient foraging. Together, these results demonstrate that human spatial cognition is content sensitive, domain specific and designed by natural selection to mesh with important regularities of the ancestral world.

kissmypineapple, when I go shopping, I think of it as dead time.

This is time where I COULD be doing something interesting, useful and important - like watching a movie, or reading a book, or working on my blog.

Instead, I'm tied up buying food and household supplies.

So, since shopping time is dead time, I want to get my shopping done as quickly as possble - and ANYBODY who slows down my shopping trip, and makes me spend more dead time trapped in the supermarket - is going to piss me off severely.

So, when I've just got all my shopping done for the week in less than 9 minutes, if I have to wait 15 minutes because the person in front of me is complaining about a 99 cent can of peas that she THOUGHT was on sale for 89 cents, it really irritates me.

I almost feel like taking a dime out of my own pocket and saying "here - here's your God-damned dime!! Are you happy now??? Now pay for your stuff and get out of my way so I can pay for my purchases and get the hell out of this store!!!"

As for a more generalized disdain for women - yeah, that's there too.

That comes from being abused by my mom as a kid, and then having a 12 year long emotionally abusive relationship with my ex, followed by 4 years of not having anybody in my life.

A life like that will tend to make a man just a little resentful of women!

UCLAbodyimage, you obviously spent a LOT of time in school.

I didn't - after a painful and uneventful year as a City College undergrad, I decided the skilled trades life was for me.

So I got in a union apprenticeship program, and four years later I came out as a journeylevel carpenter.

Thanks to that educational background, I could quite literally build a house for you, from "dirt to doorknobs"

But we really didn't study the kind of high-end stuff that you evidently did.

I quite literally cannot understand about 90% of what you've been saying in your posts (and I'd probably have to go back to college for about 7 years before I would be able to make heads or tails of any of it).

"UCLAbodyimage, you obviously spent a LOT of time in school.

I didn't - after a painful and uneventful year as a City College undergrad, I decided the skilled trades life was for me."

Tis true. Though I definitely have an interest in carpentry. When I was growing up my dad and his friends built our house, so alot of my time as a teen was spent helping with that and other projects. Ultimately, though, I acquired a disability, so unfortunately any kind of physical labor would be impossibly painful for me. I'm hoping one day to be able to do that again. But I certainly very thankful that there are professions like academia that offer the flexibility to work and teach within my limitations.

"I quite literally cannot understand about 90% of what you've been saying in your posts (and I'd probably have to go back to college for about 7 years before I would be able to make heads or tails of any of it)."

Thanks for the tip. I'll try to do a better job of making my posts less jargony.

"As for a more generalized disdain for women - yeah, that's there too.

"That comes from being abused by my mom as a kid, and then having a 12 year long emotionally abusive relationship with my ex, followed by 4 years of not having anybody in my life.

"A life like that will tend to make a man just a little resentful of women!"

Unless he knows that 2 women being abusive don't mean all women are abusive. You know, like the way some people who were abused by some men and/or Muslims know that abuse still doesn't mean all men and/or Muslims are abusive.

Strange thing, really.

I was sexually abused by a male relative up until age 9. Then as I developed into puberty early on I was almost kidnapped/raped/abused/assaulted by several random men during my early teens. Then there was the time at a friend's house that I awoke from my assigned sleeping spot on the sofa to find some guy on top of me with his hands down my pants, and the time at university that I was date-raped, the time a group of a dozen young boys kicked my head in for trying to defend a friend, said same friend's violent father and his outburst at me when I stopped him after he gave her a bloody nose, the times I've been assaulted in public as an adult by men...

But, as it happens, I don't resent or hate men as a whole at all. I recognise that for ALL the times I've been abused, I've met many kind, charming, humanistic and feminist men who respect me and who I, in turn, have great respect and admiration for.

Gregory, I think a lot of the women here can sympathise with you that abuse is horrible and it can distort one's worldview, but you need to understand that women, like men, are not "the Borg".

Did it ever occur to you that those women, who you resent for quibbling over a few pennies, may be spending their husband's wages, if they're out shopping during the day, and may not want him to get upset at their "overspending"? I know that I feel that way sometimes, and I'm the main breadwinner in my house!

Oh, and please understand I am in no way trying to demean the abuse you suffered. Experiencing abuse from people who should, after all, be caring for and nurturing you is a terrible thing.

GREGORY, I'm sorry that you've been victimized by women in your life. That's terrible. But I think you'll understand why none of the women who post here are going to be rushing to get you a tissue. I don't tolerate the attitude that b/c some men are rapists, all of them must be, and I don't tolerate generalizations, no matter how horrifying the experience, about any other class of people.

As to shopping being dead time for you...do you assume all women are, like, doing mental backflips and waving sparklers while they're running errands? It's annoying when anyone takes a long time to pay. Get over it. And since women, on average, make less than men, I'd be a little more forgiving about the ten cent squabble. We have to scrape where we can!

kissmypineapple, I wasn't asking for a tissue from anybody.

I can understand perfectly why a lot of readers here would be unsympathetic, so that's not an issue.

You asked a fair question - and I gave you an honest answer, and that's the long and short of it.

As far as the dead time thing, I'm sure a lot of women feel the same way about grocery shopping that I do.

That doesn't change the fact that it bothers me when I'm trying to go down an aisle to get a can of sardines and somebody has the entire aisle blocked with their shopping cart (especially when the aisles are wide enough that two carts can pass each other if both carts are pushed to the side).

Or if I'm trying to get out of the store quickly, and somebody ahead of me is taking way too much time to process their transaction - they're not only wasting their time, they're wasting MY time too!!!

As for the women and money angle, hey - I'm not a rich guy either!!

I was poor for most of my life, until I became a carpenter 15 years ago.

And even now, I'm far from well to do.

When I'm working, I have money to pay the bills, get groceries, maintain my tools and still have a few dollars left over.

But, like most union carpenters, I work "casually" (that is, I get hired by the day, and the second they are done with me, I get laid off on the spot).

And when I'm not working, I have to get by on Unemployment Insurance.

And, since my job is very physical, there are injuries - a broken ankle in 1995, and a torn meniscus in 2005.

Injuries mean spending 6 months to a year scraping to survive on workers comp.

So I know very well what it's like to be broke.

But, even at my poorest moments, I had enough dignity to not fight over a few pennies!!!