Are men smarter than women, or is it the other way around? Are men better with numbers and women with words, or are these just antiquated stereotypes? If the sexes do differ in these ways, are the differences pure products of culture, or did evolution have a hand in shaping them?
In this excerpt from my book A Billion Years of Sex Differences, we’ll explore some of the most explosive questions in all of psychological science. Among other things, we’ll discover:
The surprisingly simple answer to the question of which sex is smarter - and why men and women have different kinds of smarts
The crucial difference between mathematically gifted women and mathematically gifted men
Why a widespread assumption about how teachers see boys and girls gets things exactly backwards
The rise and probable fall of one of psychology’s most famous ideas
What babies, gay men, lesbians, monkeys, and mice tell us about the nature-nurture debate
Whatever you currently believe about cognitive sex differences and where they come from, at least some of your assumptions are probably wrong. Read on to find out which.