Sex, Society, and Spatial Ability

October 18, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images

It’s the kind of finding to warm the hearts of us liberal, Larry-Summers-hating,  gender-egalitarians.  Summers – you saw him in “The Social Network” as the Harvard president who had no patience for the Winklevoss twins (he didn’t have much patience for Cornell West either and probably many other things) – suggested that the dearth of women in top science and engineering positions was caused not so much by social forces as by innate sex differences in math ability. (More here and many other places.)

As others were quick to point out, those differences are greater in societies with greater gender inequality.  That’s why the math gender gap in the US has become much narrower.  In societies with greater equality, like Sweden, Norway, and Israeli kibbutzim, the male-female gap in math disappears.* But even in those societies, males still score higher on spatial reasoning. 

I’m sure that evol-psych has some explanation for why male brains evolved to be more adept at spatial reasoning.  I’m equally sure that those who favor social explanations can find residual sexism even in Sweden to explain spatial differences.  That’s why a field experiment reported last summer is so interesting.

The research team (Moshe Hoffman and colleagues, link to pdf here) tested people from two tribes in northern India – the Karbi and the Khasi.  These had once been a single tribe but had split recently – a few hundred years ago.  (Recent is a relative term, and we’re talking evolution here.)  So they were similar economically (subsistence farming of rice) and genetically.

• The Karbi are patrilineal.  Only the men own property, and they pass that property to their sons.  Males get more education. 
• Khasi society is matrilineal.  Men turn their earnings over to their wives.  Only women own property, which is passed along only to daughters.  Males and females have similar levels of education.
  

Researchers went to four villages of each tribe, recruited subjects to solve this puzzle

They offered an additional 20 rupees if the subject could solve the puzzle in 30 seconds or less. 

In the patrilineal society, women were much slower to solve the puzzle than were men.  But among the matrilineal Khasi, the difference was negligible.

The results are encouraging, at least for those who argue for greater gender equality.  But I’m not sure how much weight to give this one study, mostly because of sample size.  Is the sample the 1300 villagers who worked the puzzle?  Or is it 1 – one inter-tribal comparison?

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* Even a small difference in the means will make for a large difference in who is represented in the tail of the distribution.  Imagine two groups with average height a half-inch apart – Group Blue 5' 10", Group Red 5' 10 ½". 

Pink shows overlap. 

If you’re picking a basketball team randomly (from the pink part of the distribution), you’ll probably wind up with as many Blues as Reds.  But if you’re choosing from among those few who are 6' 6" or taller, you’re going to have more Reds.

Summers was arguing not that there was a difference in the means but that the variation was greater among males.  That wider distribution as well would make for a preponderance of males in the upper reaches of the scale (and at the lower end).

Ground Zero - The Sacred and the Profane

October 14, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

What’s so infuriating about reading David Brooks is that sometimes he gets it right, but then in the next sentence, he’ll veer off in the wrong direction.  (Translation: Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I disagree.)

Today (here) Brooks is writing about the rebuilding at Ground Zero and about Chris Ward, who was brought in to organize the whole project when it had become badly bogged down in conflict. 

Ward quickly understood his mission: to take a sacred cause and turn it into a building project. That is to say, to demystify it, to see it as it really is and not through the gauze of everybody’s emotions surrounding 9/11.

Ward’s approach, as Brooks says, was to  desacralize the mission, and Brooks picks out the detail that epitomizes this change

He changed the name of Freedom Tower to One World Trade Center.

But then Brooks tries to see Ground Zero as just one more example of a more general trend.

Maybe it’s part of living in a postmaterialist economy, but nearly every practical question becomes a values question. . . .  Many issues that were once concrete and practical are distorted because they have become symbolic and spiritual.

Tax policy, gun control, and Green Tech, says Brooks, all crumple under the weight of this symbolism.  Yes, these issues (he could have added health care to the list) can involve status politics, but it’s not at all clear how much the symbolism affects the actual policies.  Besides, Brooks gets the symbolism wrong.*

More important, Brooks closes his copy of Durkheim just when he should be turning to the next page.  Brooks ignores the structural problem.  The Ground Zero project inevitably comprises two functions – the sacred and the profane.** Like the buildings the terrorists destroyed, the new ones will be places where work, where they carry out the practical business of everyday life – buying and selling, making phone calls, entering and analyzing data.  But just because of its location, people will see the new structures as sacred. 

Usually, we separate these two realms.  We have sacred places and buildings whose only purpose is to enhance some group symbolism.  We do not ask our office buildings and  schools, stores and shopping malls, streets and parking lots, to express our collective spiritual ideas.  Nor do we ask that the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty do something useful like house the Department of Transportation or a Wal-Mart.

It’s hard enough to design a purely sacred monument – look at the controversies over memorials for Flight 93 and the Vietnam War dead.  Nor is it easy to design a huge complex of offices, parks, subways, etc. that works.  But to create something that carries out both functions to everyone’s satisfaction may be impossible. 
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*For example, Brooks says that gun policy is “seen as an assault on or defense of the whole rural lifestyle so to compromise on any front is to court dishonor.”  Doesn’t he listen to the gunslingers?  They’re not talking about lifestyles and dishonor. They’re talking about their individual freedom and safety.

** Profane in the sense of everyday and practical, not sacrilegious.

Following Steve Jobs

October 13, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

In the early 1980s, Steve Jobs wanted John Sculley, then head of marketing for Pepsi, to join Apple.  The story and its money quote are legendary. Said Jobs to Sculley:

Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?

Sculley went to Apple.

I think I first heard the story told by Sculley himself, probably on “60 Minutes.”  It’s a great line, of course, but there was an overtone I couldn’t quite place, something about it that seemed vaguely familiar that I couldn’t quite place. 

I had forgotten about it, but now Kieran Healy has posted a long and perceptive essay  “A Sociology of Steve Jobs”  on Jobs and charismatic authority.  You could assign it, you should assign it, to undergraduates to show them the relevance of Weber and how his ideas can be brilliantly applied to their own world.

But for me, the best part was that Kieran knew, as though it were obvious, the echo in the Sculley quote, and shame on me for not seeing it.  The giveaway is the “or come with me” part.  It’s Jesus gathering his disciples.

And as He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.  Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” (Mark 1: 16-17)

637 New Blog Posts for Fall

October 10, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Four years ago, I wondered (here)  about all those numbers on the covers of women’s magazines.  Since then, I have watched as the numbers wax and wane. They never disappeared completely. But for a while, they seemed to fade into disuse, like unfashionable shoes shunted to the back of the closet. But this fall, numbers returned in strength.

What’s up with all the numbers?  Of course, there’s no single answer, but I see them as particularly resonant with some themes of American culture – abundance, freedom, success, and self-improvement. 

Some of these numbers just tell you that you’re getting a lot for your money.  Lucky promises “8,000 Giveaways,” while Vogue and In Style tell you how many pages you’ll get when you plunk down your $4.99 (Vogue wins, by 120 pages). Maybe the publishers think we have a preference for quantity over quality, like those restaurants that advertise “all you can eat.”  More is better.

Still, how many new looks can a woman have for the fall?  I don’t know, and I’m not even sure what constitutes a new look. But it must be only a small fraction of the 973 offered by Bazaar. And why not round that number to something that doesn’t look like an area code? The reason, I suspect, is that 973 sounds more precise, not just some number someone made up. They actually counted. The same logic may explain why hers offers 203 fitness tips rather than 200. 

The large numbers (485 new styles, 94 bags and boots, 300 beauty tips) also seem to contradict Barry Schwarz’s idea that too much choice is overwhelming and leaves us in choice-paralysis. Maybe the women who dutifully page through Bazaar’s 973 new looks wind up unable to choose one, and they end up plodding through the fall season in their old look. But what is appealing is not the actual choice; it is the idea of choice, the sense of limitless individual freedom to choose among all these looks.

If the big numbers offer the idea of individual self-transformation, the small numbers, like Bazaar’s 10 key pieces, make it seem more possible.  You can really do this, they say.  Numbers like Oxygen’s 23 days (for sexy abs) and 21 ways (to live longer) give us a program, a schedule.  Their message is one of success through self-help and self-improvement, like Gatsby’s schedule and “general resolves.” 

Gatsby’s list included “Read one improving book or magazine per week.”  I doubt that Gatsby had Allure in mind, but they both did think big.