The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Sex-Related Comparisons: Observations 111

effect is consistent across spatial tasks? No. The

direction of the sex difference in spatial skills

is not consistent across all tasks. A spatial do-

main in which women appear to have greater

aptitude than men is object location memory.

A meta-analysis of 36 studies on object identity

memory and object location memory showed

that women outperform men on both (object

identityd=+.23; object locationd=+.27;

Voyer et al., 2007). With object identity mem-

ory, the experimenter presents the respondent

with a set of objects, such as those shown in

Figure 4.6a, removes them, and then presents

a new set of objects, some of which are old and

some of which are new, as shown in Figure

4.6b. The task of the respondent is to identify

which objects are old and which are new. For

object location memory, the objects are not

changed but their location is moved, as shown

in Figure 4.6c. Here the task of the respondent

is to identify which objects have been moved.

Sex differences in object location seemed to

depend on participant age and the type of ob-

ject. That is, sex differences were larger among

participants over 13 years of age compared to

younger participants. Women outperformed

men when objects were feminine or neutral,

but men outperformed women when objects

were masculine.

One conclusion is that men are bet-

ter at manipulating objects in space, and

women are better at locating objects. If true,

these differences could lead men and women

to give directions differently. Two stud-

ies have found that women are more likely

to use landmarks, and men are more likely

to use distances and north/south/east/west

terminology when giving directions (Dabbs

et al., 1998; Lawton, 2001). Look at Figure 4.7.

How would you get from the Town Hall to

Katja Park? Conduct your own survey on

how women and men give directions in

Do Gender 4.1 to see if this is true.

students by varying the number of correct

matches from 1 to 4, which requires respon-

dents to use the conservative strategy. The re-

sults, shown in Figure 4.5, show that modifying

the task hurt everyone’s performance but did

not completely eliminate the sex difference—

which remained large (d=+.95).

A very consistent and sizable sex dif-

ference exists in one skill that requires spatial

ability: aiming at a target (Kimura, 1999). Men

are consistently better than women in their

accuracy at hitting a target, whether shoot-

ing or throwing darts. Physical factors such

as reaction time, height, and weight do not

account for this sex difference. Differences in

experiences with target shooting also do not

account for the sex difference (Kimura, 1999).

The sex difference can be observed in children

as young as 3 years old. Performance on this

task seems to be unrelated to performance on

other spatial ability tasks, such as mental rota-

tion (Kimura, 1999).

Up to this point, the size of the sex dif-

ference in spatial skills has been variable, but

the effects always have been in the direction of

men. Can we conclude that the direction of the

Performance

14

10

8

6

4

2

0

Original MRT MRT-Modified

Male Female Male Female

12

FIGURE 4.5 Men’s and women’s performance

is impaired on the modified mental rotation task

(MRT). The overall sex difference is reduced but

remains even with the modification.

Source: Adapted from Hirnstein, Bayer, and

Hausmann (2009).

M04_HELG0185_04_SE_C04.indd 111 6/21/11 8:02 AM