Customer Reviews

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is an excellent book. It is witty and absorbing and just about impossible to put down. It is packed with the results of a multitude of studies. It is a myth-busting, incisive, mind-changing delight. It deals with the "delusions" that many people have concerning gender differences, and how these delusions have a powerful (though often unconscious) effect on people's lives.

The central myth that the author confronts is that men and women have widely different sets of ability that are mostly innate, hard-wired, and unchangeable. The author argues that this has not been demonstrated. In fact, it is not even clear that these differences in ability exist.

Take empathy. If you test people's empathy by asking them how empathetic they think they are (and yes, some scientists actually do this), then women test much higher than men. But if you actually test their abilities (by, for instance, asking what emotions are being expressed in a particular face), women do only a tiny bit better than men. And if you design the study to get rid of gender biases (the author shows how researchers do this), then women do no better than men.

Or take the ability to mentally rotate objects in space which, for a long time, has been considered to be necessary for success in math and engineering. Usually men do better than women. But if you fib and tell a group of test-takers that "women perform better than men in this test, usually for genetic reasons," then women perform as well as the men.

And on it goes. The author shows how subtle cues in our environment affect our identities and thus our behaviors and thus our life course. And how our implicit beliefs are often diametrically opposed to our explicit beliefs and how this can wreak havoc in our societies.

There are also sections on more obvious instances of gender bias in the workplace and at home, the difficulties interpreting MRI studies, the subtle ways that parents "teach" gender to their children even while claiming (and believing) that they are being gender-neutral, the effects (or not) of pre-natal testosterone, sex differences in animal behavior (did you know that a male rat will take care of an infant rat if it's placed in it's cage?), the "seductive allure" of neuroscience, and more.

A wonderful book. I think I'm going to go and read it again. . . .

It is exceedingly rare to find such a gem of a book. The book is academically serious, but it is written with such flair and panache -- and clarity and concision -- that you don't have to be a brainiac to understand the Fine points made within.

What Fine does in this book is 1) survey some of the best known literature concluding that there are biological or innate gender differences 2) expose very real problems in methodology and reasoning in this literature 3) and uncover some of the little-known work that does not suffer from such appalling errors which casts doubt on the claim that there are biological or innate gender differences. Fine is extremely careful about how she states her conclusions; she's no messianic fanatic who declares that there are no such innate differences. She is too smart to think that the data out there give us a firm answer either way. What she shows, brilliantly, is that those who pretend that there is such definitive evidence are guilty of a rush to judgment.

Fine is a serious academic who has done the public a great service by making clear to ordinary people how shibboleths about gender difference that permeate our culture do not have firm grounding in the neuroscientific studies on which they often draw. At the same time, she does the academy a great service; gender studies in neuroscience needs to up its game.

And while she is accomplishing all this, you, the reader, will be laughing, gasping, smirking, grinning, and just plain enjoying the fun way she presents her material. Kudos to such a young talent! This is going on my holiday gift list!

found this book stunning. All around you see all this stuff about 'Men's brains' and 'Women's brains', and it always struck me as odd that a sex that has, for example, written so much brilliant literature should be deemed semi-autistic, etc etc. So here comes this brilliantly researched book (just take a look at the pages and pages of notes at the end - this author knows her onions backwards and forwards and sideways) - and she points out how shoddy it all is.

And she's funny!

No one will ever again have to sit through a dinner party with some parent going on about how 'I thought that too, but you only have to LOOK at my two children to see there are innate differences... bleh bleh'. She unpicks it all and shows how social pressures are so important and the brain differences that are so often claimed are, essentially, neurotosh, aka neurosexism. I think I shall carry a copy round with me.

I think this book is set to become a classic (joining, or possibly even replacing, Carol Tavris's The Mismeasure of Woman and Anne Fausto-Sterling's Myths of Gender & Sexing the Body as must-read books on sex differences). It is a rare mix of iron-clad research, witty prose, and content that is truly important.

It's very unusual for me to read a book and want to tell everyone I know that they must read it too, but this is one of those books.

Delusions of Gender focuses in particular on the brain and media coverage, whereas Brainstorm is a synthetic evaluation of the theory that prenatal exposure to hormones has a long lasting impact in organizing the mind. The former is also much more geared towards the general public. Although both focus a great deal on methodology, Brain Storm is actually focused on the question of the etiology of gender differences, whereas the message of Delusions of Gender is focused on flaws in interpretation and use of neuroscience research.

While I admire Fine's questions, I think she makes some researchers and conclusions out to be more unreasonable than they actually are. She points out that researchers often make much of small studies and highlights two claims that originated in studies with a limited number of participants: the idea that males are more lateralized for language than females and that they have larger corpus callosums. Fine contends that when meta-analyses are done, it becomes apparent that this is not the case. It's not that clear cut. Daniel Voyer conducted a meta-analysis and concluded that there are sex differences in lateralization (Voyer, 1996). Similarly, the corpus callosum claims often depend on how the measurement is done. It's important to take into account study quality as well ( Holloway 1998). She downplays the ambiguity on these questions. Also, even Hyde's Gender Similarities Hypothesis documented sex differences in some language-related skills(Hyde, 2005). Girls outperform boys on standardized reading and writing tests (Program for International Literacy 2006, US Department of Education 1997). Moreover, Fine's discussion of the mental rotation and math relationship does not note some compelling findings that might alter a reader's impression. For example, Casey and colleagues found that spatial abilities mediated the gender gap on the SAT-M (e.g. Casey et. al 1995, Tartre 1990). She cites Ceci et. al 2009 for a statement of dispute, but doesn't go into detail about the issues they raised. They don't think the research showing SAT-M scores and mental rotation are flawed, per se. That said, Fine raises some legitimate issues about how the scientific community and press responded to some papers, especially in light of subsequent findings and controversy.

Although one can easily beg to differ with some of Fine's takes on the data, many of the questions she poses are important and worthwhile. Much of the book features Fine explaining this technology and its limitations. She spends a lot of time indicting particular studies, illuminating how ambiguous some data is, and how it gets wildly interpreted. She emphasizes how challenging it is to interpret what's really going on in the mind. One need not agree with Fine's take on certain controversial issues on the topic to see her point about popular writers gone wild. She also rightly stresses that people tend to be particularly impressed with this research (Weisberg et. al 2008). Fine's text is well-suited to instilling skepticism into readers and enabling them to look critically at the claims they might encounter in press reports. This is especially valuable because press reports typically mention methodological details, but don't cover some of the limitations in procedures.

The downside, though, as Diane Halpern notes is it not as helpful to distinguishing between cautiously executed studies with reasonable conclusions. Note also, such investigations do exist. (e.g. Allen et. al 2003; Koscik et. al 2009; Hanggi et. al 2010). Researchers who care about these sorts of issues, exist too. Consider Tor Wager who conducted a meta-analysis of 60+ brain imaging studies, and noted he was speculating in his discussion of them. Wager and one of his colleagues also opened a discussion of sex differences in the emotional brain by pointing out Aristotle's views on women's inferiority, and ended by emphasizing sex similarities. I suppose there are still limitations in the research, and some of this could be misconstrued. It's not a researcher getting overly excited about a single spurious finding that conforms to stereotypes.

Genes, hormones, and their impact on brain structure and function contribute to making the lives of men and women different (Hines, 2005). Yet, the awe that some neuroimaging studies inspire may not always be conducive to understanding how. New York Times editor wrote that Fine's book helped her "see how complex and fascinating the whole issue is." I do worry that this comes at the expense of dismissing legitimate scholarship.

Ultimately, Fine posits that some of this research will wind up in the sorry scrap heap of the past. That's not beyond the scope of possibility. Maybe in retrospect, we will see some bias, some flaws and gaps. But it won't just be a bunch of over-eager researchers to

References

Allen JS, Damasio H, Grabowski TJ, Bruss J, Zhang W. Sexual dimorphism and asymmetries in the gray-white composition of the human cerebrum. Neuroimage 2003;18:880-894.

Casey, M. B., Nuttall, R., Pezaris, E., & Benbow, C. P. (1995). The influence of spatial ability on gender differences in math college entrance test scores across diverse samples. Developmental Psychology, 31, 697-705.

Ceci, S.J., Williams, W.M., & Barnett, S.M. (2009, March). Women's underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations. Psychological Bulletin.

Fitch, RH., & Denenberg, VH. 1998. A role for ovarian hormones in sexual differentiation of the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 311-352.

Hänggi, J., Buchmann, A., Mondadori, C. R. A., Henke, K.,

Jäncke, L., & Hock, C. (2008). Sexual dimorphism in

the parietal substrate associated with visuospatial cognition

independent of general intelligence. Journal of Cognitive

Neuroscience, 22, 139-155.

Hines, M. (2004). Brain gender. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581-592.

Koscik, T., O'Leary, D., Moser, D. J., Andreasen, N. C., & Nopoulos, P. (2009). Sex differences in

parietal lobe morphology: Relationship to mental rotation performance. Brain and

Cognition, 69(3), 451-459.

Program for International Literary Report, pp. 63-64. Accessed November 9th 2009

[...]

U. S. Department of Education. (1997). National Assessment of Educational Progress (Indicator

32: Writing proficiency: Prepared by the Educational Testing Service). Washington, DC.

(World Wide Web: [...])

Voyer, D. (1996). On the magnitude of laterality effects and sex differences in functional lateralities. Laterality, 1, 51-83.

Wager, T. D., Phan, K. L., Liberzon, I., & Taylor, S. F. (2003) Valence, gender, and lateralization of functional brain anatomy in emotion: A meta-analysis of findings from neuroimaging. Neuroimage, 19, 513-531.

Wager, T. D. & Ochsner, K. N. (2005). Sex differences in the emotional brain. Neuroreport, 16(2), 85-87.

All those studies that say that women are bad at math and men are bad at relationships because their brains are hardwired that way can be very discouraging, and there are a LOT of those studies. But Cordelia Fine has looked into those studies and found flaws in them. Add into that a large number of studies that show how easy it is to jigger people's minds into doing better or worse at tasks depending on how they are psychologically primed before hand and we can see where the author is coming from.

Fine's thesis is rather than there being any physical difference between male and female brains, the differences that we see in math scores are there because our culture expects them to be there. Even when people attempt to raise their children in a gender neutral environment, culture intervenes. On TV, in schools, in children's books, in the clothing sold to children- everything is divided into genders, and females end up less adventuresome, more nurturing, expected to be nicer and not fight, and to focus on home and caring rather than invented and discovering. Toys for girls and boys are separated, and children who choose to play with toys for the opposite gender are disapproved of, especially boys who play with dolls or other `girl' toys. Tomboys may be told to act more ladylike, but boys will get beat up by other boys.

The core of her argument is that studies where test takers are primed to consider themselves members of sets other than gender yield different results than tests taken when the test takers are told things like "men traditionally do better on this test". For instance, when a group of males and females take a test and are told before hand that people who go to certain colleges (colleges that some of the test takers go to) do better on this same test, the test takers conform to this and the males and females who belong to the colleges mentioned both do better on the test than the non-certain collegians- and the males and females in that group score the same as each other on the test under these conditions. These tests have been done numerous times by different researchers, and the results are always the same- the test takers conform to expectations set up before the test. Therefore, psychology trumps brain structure where intellectual subjects are concerned.

It's an interesting proposition, and one I think needs to be investigated more- much more. There's a lot still to be untangled in gender studies. Intellectual abilities are jumbled in with emotional tendencies, and I definitely think they should be considered separately. She pretty much ignores the effect of hormones on emotional states except for the case of fetal testosterone. I think that while this book doesn't settle any gender issue questions, it does cast a lot of doubt on previous studies and urges us to look at them much harder.

Great book. I've always been annoyed by the constant "claims" that are made about men and women either being identical or totally different because I've never seen a book (until now) that described the science behind these claims. Both sets of claims have always seemed to be driven by an agenda. So I haven't known what to think.

What I loved about this book is that it was very funny, but also gave an amazingly good summary of what we know (and don't know) about the differences between men and women. Dr. Fine makes her point of view clear, but she gave me enough information for me to judge the science for myself. While I didn't agree with everything she said I finally feel like I do have some idea about what claims about the differences between men and women are true, and which are totally bogus. Finally!

This book is so good that I just had to write a review in the hopes that it would help convince someone that this book is worth buying. It's well-written, funny, thoroughly researched, and compelling. I enjoyed reading it, but it also is packed with insights and information that we should be exposed to. I'm recommending it to all my friends and family because it's by far the best book I've read in years. I absolutely couldn't give it a higher score. I might be biased because of my interest in cognitive psychology, but no one could regret buying this book.

I thought this was a most impressive and thorough overview of the research in this area, and it really does show how academics in this field are going to have to raise their game, and stop drawing truly dubious conclusions from experiments that raise so many question marks. And I hope that (like one previous academic reviewer, they won't just get cross and swat away this seriously researched and referenced book just because it's still readable!)

Is there any other field but gender in which there could be so many question marks over the quality of the research, and yet so many social conclusions being drawn - including in my own field - education. So thank God this book has come along. Every time I hear the words 'should be thinking of teaching them differently because they have different sorts of brains' I shall be better armed to argue.

After reading this book, I felt compelled to write a review for it. Dr. Fine approaches the delicate topic of gender differences without excessive use of anecdotes and unrelated studies, and maintains throughout the book how relatively new this whole science is. She debunks "fact" after fact in Dr. Louann Brizendine's book, "The Female Brain", sometimes sardonically mocking the horrific stereotyping that this type of gender "science" has caused. Instead of simply blaming everything on society, Dr. Fine acknowledges that some differences may be innate, but that we are far from linking brain structure to mind function and that humans, to a great extent, are influenced by society.

While this may seem like a kind of Captain Obvious claim, I recently looked up a talk that Dr. Brizendine presented at Google. She states "In my opinion, the debate between nature and nurture is over [in the favor of nature]." Now, with such theories dominating the popular science universe, how do girls ever manage to acquire PhDs in math, or how do boys ever learn to socialize with other human beings?

But I digress. Delusions of the Mind is a tactfully argued, well researched book that takes care not to overstep its limits (in acknowledging that there is much research to be done in this field). The writing is clear and concise, and the pace is admirably fast for such a fact and study-heavy book. The writing, I felt, did not leave much be desired!

Finally, in an effort to minimize the damage done by books like "The Female Brain" (and its new counterpart, "The Male Brain"), and "Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Why Women Always Need More Shoes", which clearly pander to the current social stereotypes, I will be buying copies for myself and my friends.

Highly recommended!