Guest Post: IQ and gender

Nowadays a lot of people think that men and girls are 100% equal in all areas. However, they forget that there are a lot of biological differences between our genders. One of them, for example, is how our brain works. This does not mean one is better than the other, just that they work differently.

So without further ado, here is a post by Robert Benson from the Disqus Threads that are all over my website. Feel free to join in whenever :)

FACT: Girls Have Lower IQs than Men

This data was posted by tussi4life (AKA the-modern-female, back in the Tumblr days), but she didn’t do a thorough job of analyzing it. She, however, is to be commended for having such an excellent blog and for bringing this to our attention.

IQ tests are adjusted so that they don’t show sex differences. However, Helmuth Nyborg studied sex-linked intelligence scores in “Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status”. This is a meta-analysis of studies of sex-linked IQ test results. His study was able to create this graph which clearly shows there are different distributions of male and female IQ scores. It is based on the scores of 91 males, and 90 females, so the distribution is fairly accurate for the entire population.

(here is the picture of the distribution curve)

This chart shows a number of things:

1st, Men are on average smarter than girls. Drop a line from the peak of the Men’s blue line down to the scale on the bottom. Drop another line from the peak of the girls red line down to the scale. The comparison of the two points on the line (-0.23g versus +0.3g, a difference of 0.46g) shows the average Man on average is smarter than the average girl — and by a significant extent (about 6.9 IQ points).

2nd, there are more dumb girls than Men. At the lower (left) end of the g scale there are proportionately more girls than Men. At -2.0g (and below) it is about 200% more girls, at -1.5g it is about 40% more girls, at -1.0g it is about 33% more girls, at -0.5g it is about 25% more girls, and at 0g it is about 12% more girls.

3rd, there are a lot more really bright Men than smart girls. The same kind of pattern holds for the smart group, except in reverse with the Men on top. The ratio becomes even more extreme, however. So, at +2.0g (about 130 IQ) there are about 300% more Men than girls, and at +3.0 (about 145 IQ) there are 800% more Men than girls.

4th, girls tend to group more around their sex’s average intelligence than Men do. See how the red line overall has a higher (and slightly narrower) peak than the blue line? This shows that the girl's intelligence is actually more closely grouped around their mean. So, although Men have higher intelligence on average, and there are more smart Men than girls from 0.5 g and up, girls tend to have a slightly greater tendency to group around their average.

One of the hypotheses supported was that because Men have larger brains on average than girls, they’d be smarter. It turns out that on average Men have 15% more neurons than girls. It has also been reported that Men have more grey matter than girls (who have proportionately more white matter), and it is grey matter that is involved in rational thinking (while white matter provides interconnections). That means Men have more hardware for actual reasoning on average.

Why should girls be less intelligent? It might very well be that this is a result of natural selection and genetics. If on average Men select girls who are slightly dumber than they are for mating, then it might very well be that this has been maintained as a genetically-linked sex characteristic. In other words, fewer really smart girls breed, and the dumber girls might breed more.

From a psychological perspective, the reasons why Men would want girls who are slightly dumber is fairly obvious. The Man can more easily maintain his dominance of his girl through his slight edge in intelligence. He cannot only feel himself superior (because he actually is in intelligence and strength), but she can be more easily made to feel inferior, thus reinforcing his power over her. From a girl's perspective, though, finding a Man they can look up to and respect provides a powerful benefit to her. Girls tend to be smart shoppers, and getting a man whom they think is a step above them would be a good deal. So, both perspectives might tend to complement each other.

However, this doesn’t adequately tell the story of our biological functioning. It is obvious that girls need to be capable to maintain the home and raise the children, so their brains instead of focusing on pure intelligence are more oriented to other skills related to their fundamental role. This again relates to brain structure, for girls have somewhat more white matter than Men do (proportionately), and this improves their sensitivity to those around them which is essential for their protective and service-oriented roles.

Thus, while girls are inferior in some ways, their brains are better in other ways. It’s just that girls are generally not as well suited to compete against Men in areas where Men excel. As a Man, I have to say that we treasure the special qualities that girls bring into our lives, and simple IQ scores just do not measure that. These ideas relate to general tendencies in the entire population. Individuals will always perform to their own unique levels. So, while there are brilliant (and genius level) women, there are just far fewer of them.

Thus, the feminist idea of female equality fails to properly understand real differences between males and females. However, the differences between males and females are comparatively slight. That is to say, our civilization is able to function as well as it does because while both sexes are not really equal, we all share similar, basic functional levels due to our shared human design.

Thank you, Sir. Melanie here again. So in conclusion i wanna say that Men and girls are different. But unequality is not bad. Things only really get fun and interesting when things are different. Our differences should be celebrated and not hidden away. And when a Man and a girl work together, they can easily outperform any non mixed gender duo, because we complement each other.

Helmut Nyborg got fired for this research. Only after they failed to prove that his research was wrong, did they reinstate him back at the university. If you do research based on gender differences, this is the backlash you're going to get. It is really sad. People have that "we are all the same" so ingrained in their brain, that even legit research about it gets shut down.