Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance
30.01.2007
– Is the disparity between women and men in the sciences the result of an innate difference in cognitive ability or the result of a social phenomena such as selective participation or discrimination? Chess is a good way to objectively study this question, since the rating system tracks players throughout their careers. A paper by two scientists reports on the results of such a study.
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Nigel Davies:
A busy person’s opening system
Players with interests and commitments away from the chess board often find it difficult to compete against those with more study time. Their opponents come to the board armed with the latest theory and can bash out moves well into the middle game. On this DVD Nigel Davies addresses this issue by demonstrating a simple and easy to learn opening system designed for the busy person.
More information...
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The study is by Christopher F. Chabris and Mark E. Glickman and is entitled
"Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance: Analysis of a Large Cohort
of Competitive Chess Players." It was published in the latest issue
of the journal Psychological
Science, which has put an abstract online:
Only 1% of the world's chess grandmasters are women. This underrepresentation
is unlikely to be caused by discrimination, because chess ratings objectively
reflect competitive results. Using data on the ratings of more than 250,000
tournament players over 13 years, we investigated several potential explanations
for the male domination of elite chess. We found that (a) the ratings of men
are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched
boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin chess competition
in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in
locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their initial
ratings are not lower than those of boys. We conclude that the greater number
of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number
of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels.
For those of you who want to catch the gist without actually procuring the
journal, here are some highlights from the summary provided by Chabris and Glickman:
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There could be some innate difference in ability between men and women overall
with respect to the skill required to play chess well. This difference in
average or in variability need not be large; at the upper tail of the distribution
where chess players operate for say spatial ability, a small difference
would result in a large difference in representation. They call this the
ability distribution hypothesis.
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Discrimination could result in a difference in participation through different
standards. However, they note that this is not a problem for this particular
study because Chess rankings are objective measures. You can't discriminate
against someone when their gender cannot be calculated into their performance.
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There could be a differential drop-out rate between boys and girls. Equal
numbers of boys and girls with equal abilities could begin chess training,
but fewer girls could see it through to becoming chess grandmasters. They
call this the differential dropout hypothesis.
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Fewer women could self-select to participate in chess. If fewer talented
women choose to participate in chess in the first place, by attrition alone
there will be fewer in the resulting grandmaster pool. They call this participation
rate hypothesis.
After examining the data Chabris and Glickman come to the following conclusions:
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Men and women differed in chess ability in all age groups even after differences
like frequency of play (read: level of training) or age were taken into
account. The disparity between men and women in ability exists at the beginning
and persists across all age groups.
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No greater variance is to be found in men than women – if anything
in most age groups women had a higher variance than men.
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Women and men do not drop out more or less frequently when ability and
age are factored out. For example, if you are not very good at chess you
are more likely to stop playing tournaments, but girls and boys that are
equally good are equally likely to stop playing. This strikes a blow at
the differential dropout hypothesis.
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If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance,
you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is
equal the disparity in ability vanishes.
There is a mores extensive description in the Science blog "Pure
Pedentary", where the subject can also be discussed.
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