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Re:Study: Women performed better on a math test when using s... by laumars on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @11:26AM (#5978410)
edit: it's been pointed out that I misread the part of the article where it stated that men's performance under the alias didn't improve. My apologies. However to keep the flow of the thread I've kept my original post below:

> Research finds the threat comes in two flavours. Women can fear their poor performance will be used to bolster the "women are weak at maths" gender stereotype (known as "group-reputation threat"). Or they can fear that their poor performance will be taken as proof that they conform to the stereotype ("self-reputation threat"). Both can undermine women's ability to fulfil their true potential.

Surely you can use that same logic to say that men are under the same fears and pressures to outperform women. Trying to argue a psychological handicap like the above -where the author cites two contradicting examples that are dependant on the individual- doesn't seem fair when it's only applied to women.

The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve. And the men did still still perform better. So you could also argue that this study proved that men's true maths skills are unlocked by pretending to be someone else. Which then leaves me wondering why there's the statistical anomaly in favour of men (I'm doubly curious as I'd always assumed that the figures would be the opposite way around, if just because my wife is quite significantly better at that subject than I)

Re:Study: Women performed better on a math test when using s... by shawabawa3 on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @11:33AM (#5978473)
> The fact is, the men under an alias in that study did also improve.

No they didn't.

From the study abstract [1]

"Women who used a fictitious name, and thus had their self unlinked from the math test, showed significantly higher math performance and reported less self-threat and distraction, relative to those who used their real names. Men were unaffected by the manipulation"

  [1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2012.687012#.UdLyj6xDuKk
Re:Study: Women performed better on a math test when using s... by laumars on Tuesday July 02, 2013 @11:37AM (#5978506)
Ah I must have misread that last sentence. Thanks for the correction