Let’s say the most important thing right away: women are no more stupid than men, the intellect of men and women is generally equal. This is the first. Second: this applies only to the space of work or study. As soon as a woman moves into the space of her personal life, her intellect is rapidly replaced by emotions and completes its work. Third: it seems that this is not a biological feature of women, but a cultural factor: many modern men like to see women fools, women show them this, and modern culture allows such behavior of a woman.
Now more and more seriously.
On intelligence tests, men are, on average, slightly smarter. Smarter, but not much — not enough to be the basis for far-reaching conclusions. In any case, there are a large number of women who confidently overtake most men in the competition of intelligence.
According to Wikipedia, the smartest person in the world is a woman, Marilyn vos Savant, an American writer, playwright and journalist. According to other sources, the smartest woman on the planet is Bulgarian Daniela Simidchieva: she has 5 master’s degrees, an IQ of 192 and 3 children. It’s hard to say which of them is really smarter, because testing gives different results in different years: Savant’s IQ ranges from 167 to 230.
Over the past 100 years, women have been catching up with men in IQ. If a hundred years ago in most countries women lagged behind men in general intelligence by an average of 5 units, then the gap gradually decreased, and today in many countries women are already ahead of men in intelligence (researcher James Flynn, professor at the New Zealand University of Otago).
Data for Russia: the level of intelligence of men is 100,01 points, women 99,86.
As for the most outstanding indicators, not the “general temperature in the hospital”, the number of men who showed the level of “genius” turned out to be almost 5,5 times more than women. In terms of “highly educated” men also surpassed women, although in this case there were only twice as many men. A study of more than 100 thousand students, conducted by Canadian professor John Philip Rushton, showed that the IQ of his students is 3,64 points lower than that of his students. On the other hand, among men there are more people with a serious lag in intelligence, including outright fools.
These data are yet another confirmation of Geodakian’s theory, which states that evolution experiments on men, and puts more and more proven ones into women. Indeed, there is more variation among men: men are more often geniuses and more often mentally retarded. On the contrary, the intellect of women is distributed more evenly: among women there are few intellectually outstanding, but there are also fewer lagging behind.
Curiously, an increase in testosterone (a male sex hormone) improves intelligence and the ability to spatial (topographical) thinking, and these data are true for both men and women.
An interesting and unexpected point of view is offered by Satoshi Kanazawa. He argues that men are more often smarter than women, not because they are men, but because men are more often taller. According to studies, taller people are smarter than shorter people: every inch of height (whether male or female) adds about 0,4 IQ points. The partial effect of height on intelligence is estimated to be more than three times stronger than the partial effect of gender.
178cm women are on average smarter than 178cm men, and 165cm women are smarter than 165cm men on average. But more importantly, 178cm people are significantly smarter than 165cm people. cm, and most people with a height of 178 cm are men, and most people with a height of 165 cm are women. Tall women are usually smarter than short men, but on average men are taller …
Summing up: it seems that measuring «intelligence in general» is not the smartest thing to do. When answering the requests of practice, one must be extremely specific, speaking about the strengths and weaknesses of the male and female minds in certain situations. Perhaps a young man can do the job of a cashier just as well as a girl, he will have enough intelligence, but he will not have the patience and perseverance to sit day after day at the cash register, and he will start making mistakes. There are a number of jobs that men do worse than women (and vice versa), and it is hardly worth reducing everything to the strength or weakness of the mind. For the tasks of practice, it is more important to understand which tasks are better solved by a man, which ones by a woman, and how a particular young man or girl knows how to manage his head.
It is curious that the same Daniela Simidchieva, who has 5 master’s degrees, does not know how to earn money at all, and they do not take her to work. Her head is not sharpened for earnings.
Simidchieva says: “I am an industrial engineer, an English teacher, an electrical engineer, and I have five Masters of Science degrees. But as it turned out, in Bulgaria, employers do not want smart employees to work for them. Even during the days when I had a job, the biggest salary I received was no more than $150 a month. I can’t sell myself!»
What is the best sharpened female mind? The female mind is specialized in everything related to human relationships. If we take the sphere of relations, more precisely, the solution of operational issues in relations, then here women are definitely smarter. Women feel the interlocutor better, more accurately predict the development of relationships — which, in fact, is measured not so much by IQ as by the level of emotional intelligence.
However, even if in relationships it is not about the situation “here and now”, but about the issues of the strategy of relations, then men are already better oriented here. Why? Because here you need to no longer feel, but think. Moreover, in business situations related to conceptual thinking and responsible decision-making, men usually act smarter. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, women’s thinking is not so reliable, it is easier to fail under the influence of emotions. A woman can be very smart, but she is not reliable — her thinking, her mind often fails, and she is led by emotions. It is known that women are usually more emotional, and emotions turn off their heads.
An experiment was conducted at the Moscow Institute of Psychology. They took a man: candidate of science, 35 years old, IQ — 160. They measured the level of his intelligence when beautiful ladies walked around and lightly touched him. He showed an IQ of 80. Then a 30-year-old lady with an IQ of 155 took part in the experiment. Men from the club’s bodybuilding club walked around her and danced a striptease show. IQ — 75. However, it is unclear whether such a decrease in intelligence occurred in connection with sexual interest, or simply touching and dancing people simply distracted?
These tips are not about how to turn on your head. You don’t need to think to make decisions like that, but women like this kind of advice.
download video
Secondly, thinking is only a tool that gives results only when it is used. It’s one thing to be smart (smart), it’s another thing to turn on your head, use your mind. You can have a car with the ability to drive up to 250 km / h, but a calm driving enthusiast or even a hiker will move slowly. Peak achievements in the intellectual activity of a particular person say little about his daily rationality. A person can have a very high IQ, but if he does not like to use his head or does not consider it right (“you need to be able to turn off your head!”), Then in many situations he will turn out to be simply inadequate. In particular, most women perfectly use the mind at work when it is required by management, and turn off their heads when the working day ends: it is more convenient and pleasant for a woman to live with feelings.
During IQ testing, the girl will turn on her head and show excellent results. And when she leaves the table and starts chatting with her friend, she will turn off her head and start worrying about stupid things. Q: So what is her actual intelligence? It seems that talk of «intelligence in general» is not quite serious.
Unfortunately, modern culture insists that it is necessary for men to think, while «women do not have to think.» The desire of men to feel their intellectual superiority also works in the same direction: a girl who plays a little fool is more attractive to many men, and girls take this into account. As a result, even if women in general are in no way inferior to men in terms of their intellect, in practice, in many situations, girls treat the need to think philosophically and do not always use their minds …
Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov
Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.