mike geary: A popular gender stereotype that boys are better at mathematics than girls undermines girls' math performance because it causes worrying that erodes the mental resources needed for problem solving, new research at the University of Chicago shows. The research study also showed for the first time that this threat to performance caused by gender stereotyping can also hinder success in *other* academic areas because mental abilities do not immediately rebound after being compromised by mathematics anxiety. This could help explain why girls don't perform as well in math, and why girls and women would be less likely to choose careers dealing with math. Do you agree, gender stereotypes about Math could affect a girl's academic abilities in math and other academic areas as well? Here is an article about the research study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200鈥?/a>|||There was a study - I wish I could remember the source. Anyway, they studied college-aged Japanese women. They were given a math test. When the women were told that they were "good" at math, they did 15% better (on average) than when they were told that they weren't expected to do well.|||I think so, and I think it does apply to other subjects as well. If you believe a person can do well, they generally will, or at least do better. Also, in my experience, teachers tend to take the ones that are naturally better in their subjects under their wing, and encourage them more.|||I hate to say this here, but it's how I feel. I've had it to *here* with groups of any sort claiming they under-achieved in school because somebody told them they could not do it, therefore they didn't try to achieve their full potential. Horse hockey - and studies can only speculate as to 'why.' If some person truly had so little self-confidence to apply thenselves, their parents are much more to blame than "society." When I was 9 my little brother and I whined to Mom that there were no home-made bookies in the house (just Chips Ahoy). She had just finished working 8 hrs - she slammed the recipe box on the counter and told us that if we wanted cookies we could bake them ourselves. No cooking classes, no teaching, no support group, nobody saying "Yes, dear, boys can make cookies just as well as girls." But we got to it and made some awesome cookies. I bear no guilt in this - I have not told anybody thery could not do X or Y because they were male/female, white/black/Asian, short/tall, etc. Maybe some girls have shunned math because the girl's role models in our society don't do math,. Let's see.....Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Oprah, Whitney Houston, keep naming all the famous women and how many got to where they are because they could do calculus?|||Sorry. Happy Bullet is DEAD on (minus the play in traffic- I won't say that). PLEASE. Let's be realistic. I have NEVER heard anyone at ANY of my schools make a comment about girls not being worse in math. Furthermore, let's analyze this. Saying boys are better somehow undermines female performance? What, pray tell, do you suppose happens when you say to a young boy, "Girls are better at reading," or writing? Does that shoot the language skills of males to hell in some way or another? Oh, and looking at the "study," I see some problems. 1) We have NO idea how large the sample size is. 2) We have NO idea if the sample was even random. 3) We have NO idea what kind of coaching went on. One last point- it's a question actually. If stereotypes DO decrease academic abilities (...), WHAT should be done about it? Should all male teachers have sensitivity training? If a boy says boys are better at math, should he be sent down to the principal's office? Sorry. I just don't think girls can honestly be that weak. QUICK EDIT: Ok, question poster. Let's say you take 20000 staunch conservatives. You "randomly" assign them to two groups, with 10000 in each. One group is read a speech written by Senator Obama, and the other is given nothing. They are then asked whether they approve of Obama. Surprisingly, 94% of the "speech" group and 95% of the "no speech" group dislike Obama when given the choices "Approve, Disapprove, and No Opinion!" The study concludes that listening to an inspiring speech therefore has no effect on the approval rating of the American populace. It's pretty obvious that you can't draw that kind of a conclusion from the survey, given that the group had a particular characteristic in common that may have (and in this case, probably did) confounded the results. It is important that you get a random SAMPLE, not that you just randomize once you GET the sample. God only knows how they put it together. (Noticed that I accidentally said "if the sample SIZE was random above; I removed the word "size".)|||it depends. it can undermine some, especially the ones who aren't sure of themselves, but it certainly didn't undermine me & i'm sure it doesn't undermine many other women.|||Of course it stifles their abilities, just as being told you are inadequate for any other gender profiling. But to break that thought process, why then are there so many great male chefs? Isn't it a woman's place in the kitchen? The bottom line is if you are SMART enough to be considered a mathematical genius you should have the nerves to be able to withstand the pressures of being a woman---life is not fair to women, and I am the last to say that it is--why my daughter's GUIDANCE COUNSELOR in a very expensive private school told her blatantly she would never get into the school of her choice and that she better pick a lot more----it depressed her, gave her anxiety, but guess what? She proved that ***** wrong and got in on early acceptance and flagged it in her face!!! Sometimes challenges make people grow.........|||I've seen this article, as it happens and had already formulated an opinion. Take a look at the very last paragraph of the report which states; ""We demonstrated that worries about confirming a negative group stereotype may not only impact performance in the stereotyped domain, but that this impact can spill over onto subsequent, unrelated tasks that depend on the same processing resource the stereotype-related worries consume," Beilock and her colleagues wrote. The research was supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation" ______________________________________鈥?br> I find articles that come about as a direct byproduct of GRANTS which conclude with "CAN" or "MIGHT" to be a troubling problem in our educational system. The conclusions are weak, poorly formulated and will appeal to losers, not winners. It is almost insulting, no, not almost, it is insulting. That it took until the year 2007 to come up with this hypothesis which is based on a preconceived premise and is based on stereotype, not fact, and is moreover just a means of collecting foundation money for a "make work" project that perpetuates a continuing form of "employment" just leaves me cold, almost angry. There's really no way for any one of us to gain anything of real value from these kinds of reports with any confidence. A person, male or female, who is a highly skilled mathematician is just that, highly skilled. You either can or cannot understand and solve complex mathematical formulas and your mental capacity for doing so is not eroded or diminished because someone else has the notion that the male is better than the female. These kinds of stereotypes no longer have a place in the society of today and are bound to become even less important as time passes by. There's nothing at all that a woman is unable to do, except for certain highly physical matters, that's already been proven many times over.|||I'm with the other guy whose response I read so far. Though not as cruel. But seriously, I never saw or heard anything but boys struggling to get decent grades in school. Girls always got the extra attention, extra motivation, extra support. When boys messed up, they simply said the boys were hyperactive, troublemakers or class clowns... not realizing that perhaps the boys didn't understand the topic and needed extra help too. Too heck with your studies. UPDATE: When I said 'too heck with your studies,' I knew this was a woman studies category. Obivously I thought your supposed 'study' isn't worth the hypothetical, wishful feminists legs it's standing on. 1. It's proven a hundred times over that brains of the different sexes are wired to excel in different tasks. 2. I'm more concerned with why individual children have trouble in a certain topic-rather than generalizing and calling all people of a certain group crippled by some maligned societal perception.|||That makes some sense. A friend of mine, after transferring her daughter to an all-girls high school, was shocked to see her interest in math increase substantially. Somehow, for some reason, she was content to sit quietly in the math class at her old school and make C's, but was quickly doing higher-level work and making A's at her new (more challenging) girl's school. I'm not sure what it is precisely - I'm sure the teacher didn't come out and tell her "girls are bad at math", and I would never have called her the type to succumb to peer pressure, but there it is. I would be so bold as to claim that girls are sometimes more sensitive to picking up on what is "expected" of them than boys are. I've seen a lot of work on this, and it seems that the "egos" of boys are more stable, and girls' "egos" are more apt to be affected by others' opinions and tacit messages. If this is true, it should change the way we go about teaching (and parenting) girls.|||Probably so. I've met a ot of girls in my high school courses (I took all the hard math classes, too) who were very good at math. And some of my male classmates struggled in math. So it's just a stereotype.|||It's quite possible. If you were told at a young age that girls weren't supposed to play with trucks, would you keep playing with trucks? Every child with a specific talent should be encouraged to develop it further. For example, I started reading at a very early age and I was pretty good at making up stories, so I was told to keep writing, and I did. Meanwhile, my brother loves animals, and no one told him to stop studying them. He now intends to be a zoologist.|||I don't know... I was in the bottom of the barrel math classes in High School and College and there were always more guys in those classes than otherwise. It could be that the other girls were still trying to struggle through the harder classes. And my other academic abilities were never hindered by math. After math class I would arrive at English, history, various science classes and (in college) philosophy and psychology with a sigh of relief at the prospect of something I was good at. I don't know about everyone else, but I rebounded quickly. In fact, the only math classes I was ever any good in were the statistics courses I took for my psych major. The fact I could connect the math to another subject that I understood helped a lot. I got an A in stats I and a B in stats II.|||I think that both genders have a propensity towards certain subjects. It's just the way the brain is wired. I started off loving math as a child but (just as stats show) I lost interest in around 3rd grade. There wasn't a strong push for mathmatics at this stage. People started encouraging me in writing instead. I think once people started encouraging me on one field and helping me less with the other, I developed a defeates attitude and gave up. I struggled with math all the way up until I graduated highschool, and have avoided it this far in my college career. I realize there is a mental block I must over come, and that math will take much more focussing than other subjects. This is a shame, but the same rings true for men and boys. At the same time I was encouraged to put my focus towards writing was the same instance where the boys were pushed towards science and math. People often say boys lag behind girls in verbal skills, and so they over compensate with an emphasis on science and math and by doing so, make boys feel inferrior in this respect. Even to this day my husband will tell me he is uncomfortable with spelling. He'll write me a beautiful love letter, but will be ashamed of it, calling it cheesy. Our public schools are lacking and teachers are lazy. Instead of realizing that the two genders learn at different speeds they take their strengths and make them focus primarily on those,and in turn, this makes the students feel stupid in those subjects in which they don't initially suceed. We need to realize we all have a certain propensity towards particular subjects and then not keep the emphasis solely on those but encourage both genders to work on those subjects in which they are not their most comfortable, we need to be patient and never make them feel incapable. another area I find to be bias is in the emphasis we put on children's attributes. Boys are affirmed from a young age in their abilites, while girls are affirmed through their looks. "my, aren't you a pretty girl" and to boys, "how smart, you finished that puzzle all by yourself?" girls recieve 10 times the compliments on their looks than boys, causing those girls to grow into adolesence and subconscienciously put their focus to beauty and being desirable. It's unhealthy. We need to mix up the types of compliments we give girls.|||hmmm sounds like the people who have been examined in the study have a backbone made of gelly. Seriously though thats total bull. The reason men are more likely to excel at math than women is because of the distribuition of white brain matter to grey matter which tends to be more in favour of the grey stuff in men.