Friday, July 21, 2006

Sex on the Brain: Surprise, there's not much Difference

God, these things are such crap, but I'm not doing much else today...



You scored as Either. You brain is neither specifically male nor female in the way you perceive things. As bad as this sounds it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, but it might.

Either

68%

Male

64%

Neither

54%

Female

39%

Should you be MALE or FEMALE?*
created with QuizFarm.com


Ha ha. In the more advanced quiz, I came out leaning-toward-male-brained:

Angles
This task tested your ability to identify the angle of a line by matching it with its twin. This is a spatial task, which looks at how you picture space.

Your score: 15 out of 20
Average score for men: 15.1 out of 20
Average score for women: 13.3 out of 20

Spot the difference
This task tested your ability to identify which objects changed position. You lost points, if you incorrectly identified objects.

Your score: 14%
Average score for men: 39%
Average score for women: 46%

Damn, I suck!

Hands
You said your right thumb was on top when you clasped your hands together.

Right thumb on top: This suggests the left half of your brain is dominant. Many studies have tried to establish whether there is a relationship between handedness and brain dominance. Some scientists believe that if you are left brain dominant, you would be more verbal and analytical.

Left thumb on top: This suggests the right half of your brain is dominant. Some studies theorise that as a right brain dominant person, you may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes.

Ummmm OK.

Emotions and Systems
This task looked at whether you prefer to empathise or systemise.

Your empathy score is: 2 out of 20
Average score for men: 7.9 out of 20
Average score for women: 10.6 out of 20

Oh! What a lousy score!!! Why doesn't this surprise me?

What does your result suggest?

Empathisers are better at accurately judging other people's emotions and responding appropriately. If you scored 15 and above, you are very empathic and would be an ideal person to comfort people in a time of crisis. Women in general are better at empathising.

Systemising

Your systemising score is: 6 out of 20
Average score for men: 12.5 out of 20
Average score for women: 8.0 out of 20

What does your result suggest?

Systemisers prefer to investigate how systems work. A system can be a road map, flat pack furniture, or a mathematical equation – anything that follows a set of rules. A score of 15 and above suggests you're good at analysing or building systems. Men in general are better at systemising.

Eyes
This task tested your ability to judge people's emotions.

Your score: 8 out of 10
Average score for men: 6.6 out of 10
Average score for women: 6.6 out of 10

Fingers
We asked you to measure your ring and index fingers. Your ratios came to:

Right Hand: 0.98
Left Hand: 1

Average ratio for men: 0.982
Average ratio for women: 0.991

Faces
This task looked at how you rate the attractiveness of a series of faces. The images you looked at were digitally altered to create slight differences in masculinity.

Your choices suggest you prefer more masculine faces.

3D shapes
This task tested your ability to mentally rotate 3D shapes.

Your score: 8 out of 12
Average score for men: 8.2 out of 12
Average score for women: 7.1 out of 12

What does your result suggest?

If you scored 7 - 9: In past studies, 50 per cent of the people who scored in this range were women and 50 per cent were men.

Words
This task looked at your verbal fluency.

Your score: you associated 7 word(s) with grey and you named 4 word(s) that mean happy. We are assuming that all the words you entered are correct.

Average score for men: 11.4 words total
Average score for women: 12.4 words total

My only defense is that maybe I didn't understand the question correctly...

What does your result suggest?

If you produced 6 - 10 words: Most people in this range have a female-type brain.

Ultimatum
This task asked you how you would divide money.

If you had to split £50 with someone, you said you would demand £25

So far on the Sex ID test, men have demanded 51.6% (£25.80) of the pot and women have demanded 51.0% (£25.50), on average.

(all stolent from David)

7 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Jeremy said...

Heh. I scored as 89% neither.

Anonymous said...

73% male, 64% either, 43 % neither, 36% female. God, these tests are such bullshit.

... now I'm trying to decide if I look good in a tie, or not so much.

Kameron Hurley said...

Yea, these tests just confuse the crap out of me. I just don't see all tha concrete "innate sexual difference" stuff that they purport to be able to prove.

I mostly just see, you know, people. With differing skills and abilities.

Ho-hum

Anonymous said...

I've heard that there's supposed to be something to the rotation test. But I scored 12 out of 12, so whatever.

Anonymous said...

...but the only reason I say that there's supposed to be something to the rotation thing is because I've heard several researchers decry everything Summers/Pinker had to say, then add "oh, except for the rotation test. Apparently there might actually be something to that one." I've heard/read that at least twice.

But I dunno. Whenever I got confused on that test, it really felt... like there was a single, very specific circuit in my brain that was temporarily on the fritz. It felt like a simple switch in polarity -- like I should be able to just reach into my brain, flick a switch and make it go away. I also don't buy that you can't train yourself to do better at rotation. "Scores of 10-12 -- are you an engineer or a scientist by training?" Why yes. Yes, I am. Don't suppose that has anything to do with it, do ya?

Pff.

(Speaking of, did you hear about that study where they actually measured hypothalamus enlargement in newly-hired London taxi cab drivers? So much for "innate.")

Anonymous said...

These things just highlight how much we are pushed into specific cliche gender categories these days, and what is automatically assumed of us because we are of a certain sex.

Good fun, though to see what makes us female... in the eyes of a certain quiz-maker!

David Moles said...

Yeah, on the word thing I think you're just supposed to make shit up. And they don't check your answers. So: gray = rocks, clouds, rain, elephants, dust, sky, paint, mice, lead, clay, pixels... happy = joyful, ecstatic, delighted, pleased, cheerful... something something. Actually I think the fact that I was so bad at coming up with synonyms for "happy" should affect my score, somehow...

Jackie, that London cab driver study was AWESOME. The Knowledge, bitches! Other cities' cab fleets, eat your hearts out!

Even on the rotation thing, I want to see any allegedly innate gender differences disambiguated from educational influences.

And does the fact that through sheer coincidence I read "Flatland" at a really young age, and then used to obsessively draw 3-axis cartesian coordinate systems and use them to plot out 3-D shapes on graph paper mean I cheated somehow? I think maybe it does.

If instead of doing that, I'd actually paid attention in 8th grade algebra, and learned how quadratic equations work when I was supposed to learn it, instead of three years later, also mean I have a "male brain"?