Philip rushton, a controversial British psychologist, recently published a test result, subverting the traditional idea that men and women have the same IQ. In the test he and another psychologist did, they came to the conclusion that the IQ of men was 3.63 points higher than that of women on average. Once this result was announced, it immediately caused widespread controversy. By email, our reporter interviewed Philip rushton about this test and the controversy it brought.
IQ test
Men have more advantages than women in understanding, creation and word reasoning.
Rushton told this reporter that they selected more than 65,438+10,000 male and female students aged from 17 to 18 in the United States, and conducted intelligence tests on them, including 46,000 males and 56,000 females. The 65,438+10,000 subjects were divided into 7 groups, each group was divided into 1 1 grade according to family income and parents' education level, and each group was divided into1grade according to individual education level.
The standard they use is the entrance examination for American high schools to enter universities, that is, the Academic Ability Assessment Examination (SAT). After analyzing the intelligence data of 145 reading and math test, it is found that men are better than women in understanding complex concepts, creativity and word reasoning ability, and the average intelligence score is 3.63 points higher than that of women.
Subvert the inherent concept
Rushton: General intelligence tests are flawed.
Previously, rushton's view that there are IQ differences between races was met with a lot of people's eyes, thinking that he was actually racial discrimination. And this amazing conclusion will make him bear the stigma of sexism. In this case, the reporter asked rushton's personal views on gender IQ differences. He said that the IQ difference between men and women was actually discovered by psychologists a long time ago, and it has not been thought about as people say 100 years. As early as 1904, charles spearman, a famous British psychologist, put forward the view that there are differences in IQ between men and women.
Spearman once pointed out that in IQ tests, people did not emphasize different indicators, that is to say, IQ tests still have illogical places in some aspects. Common intelligence tests, such as oral expression, mathematical reasoning, spatial thinking, etc. Rushton believes that these tests lack consideration of relevant factors. He said: "For example,' space' is related to the ability of thinking rotation and the speed of reflection, while' oral expression' is related to the level of understanding and fluency. This raises the question, among these factors, are the intelligence of men and women the same? "
In his test, he analyzed 145 related factors such as understanding complex concepts, creativity and word reasoning ability in reading and math test evaluation.
Physiological data
Men have more 15% nerve cells than women.
As for why men are smarter than women, rushton said that it is because men's brains are slightly bigger than women's. This means that there are more nerve cells in men's brains, which can help them to obtain information effectively. Men's brains are bigger than women's, which has been proved by previous studies. Rushton studied the brain capacity of 0/00 children in East Asia, and found that from birth to 7 years old, the brain capacity of boys is 5 cubic centimeters more than that of girls, and in adolescence, the brain capacity of boys is also larger than that of girls.
Rushton also said that a Danish study in 1997 proved that men have 15% more nerve cells than women. This has also led some scholars to assume that since men's brains are bigger than women's, does it mean that men are smarter?
However, in people's traditional concept, girls study better than boys in school. At this point, rushton also explained: "In the late adolescence, girls perform better than boys in school, because women develop earlier, which masks the potential differences between them."
Background link
Debate on the difference of IQ between men and women
Although rushton put forward new research results and met with opposition, he was not the first person to put forward the view that men are smarter. In June 2005, 5438+065438+ 10, British scholars Paul Owen and Richard Lynn wrote that "the IQ of men is higher than that of women". Once this paper was published, it immediately triggered a heated debate. Some scholars cursed this conclusion as "nonsense and extremely stupid".
Their research is based on IQ research data published in various magazines from 964 to 2004, and then statistical analysis is made. Owen and Lynn said that the analysis shows that there are more men with high IQ than women. For example, among people whose IQ exceeds 125, the number of men is twice that of women, and such people are usually regarded as "first-class talents"; The ratio of male to female with IQ above 155 is 5.5: 1, and such people are usually called "geniuses". They published this conclusion in the British Journal of Psychology.
However, their conclusions were vehemently refuted by British IQ expert Steve Brinhorn, calling their research sheer nonsense. And immediately wrote an article in Nature for criticism. At this time, Nature and British Journal of Psychology also stood on both sides.
In addition, steve jones, a geneticist at the University of London, is also on the opponent's side. "It's not that there is no difference in brain capacity between men and women, but be careful not to exaggerate."
Rushton answered our reporter's questions.
1
Is the test one-sided?
Regarding the result of the controversy in rushton, the reporter asked those who opposed rushton what questions they had. Rushton gave some examples to reporters.
For example, someone asked rushton that he first used the American College Entrance Examination, not an ordinary intelligence test. Is this high level suitable for people with low level? Rushton also put forward his own reasons for this, saying, "This is a practical matter. On the other hand, this kind of test is highly correlated with the general intelligence test and can be used as an intelligence test. Moreover, we have added relevant factors to it, and the results prove that there are indeed gender differences in reasoning, speaking and memory. "
Regarding whether it is suitable for everyone, rushton thinks that although their sample size is large, it is impossible to know only through their tests, but their results are compared with those of many previous scholars, and they are very confident in their own results. In contrast, some studies include that of Richard Lynn, another British psychologist (this newspaper interviewed Lynn about the research with the highest IQ in China). In some tests, he found that the IQ of adult men is about 4 to 5 points higher than that of women. His experiment was published in the journal Nature on July 6th this year.
2
Women can't.
Engaged in high-end work?
Rushton also said that he was also asked if his results proved that women were not qualified for high-end jobs. Rushton said that his results did not fully represent this meaning. Because there are still many smart women in the world, such as those who won the Nobel Prize, just like Madame Curie. This just shows that a few women are smarter than men. Rushton thinks that the ratio of smart men to smart women should be 70 to 30 or 80 to 20, rather than the IQ of men and women being the same.
At the end of the interview, the reporter also asked rushton a question. His test was conducted in America. Doesn't this explain the general situation in the world? Rushton replied that they have studied intelligence test samples from some countries and regions, such as Japan, Singapore, India, Israel and many European countries, as well as Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong, and the results are consistent with their tests.