7 votes

Unlike men, women’s cognitive performance may improve at higher room temperature

31 comments

  1. [10]
    Rocket_Man
    (edited )
    Link
    I chose the title from neurosciencenews but linked to the actual study because their article is a little bare bones. I think these findings are very interesting, but I don't understand what the...

    I chose the title from neurosciencenews but linked to the actual study because their article is a little bare bones. I think these findings are very interesting, but I don't understand what the underlying mechanism would be.

    Additinally the cognitive reflection task questions are kind of fun.

    A bat and a ball cost 1.10EUR in total. The bat costs 1.00EUR more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

    If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

    In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

    8 votes
    1. [9]
      acdw
      Link Parent
      0.05 EUR, 5 minutes, 47 days? Of course I'm in a cool room, so :)

      0.05 EUR, 5 minutes, 47 days?

      Of course I'm in a cool room, so :)

      4 votes
      1. Rocket_Man
        Link Parent
        You are correct on all counts, nice job!

        You are correct on all counts, nice job!

        2 votes
      2. [4]
        asoftbird
        Link Parent
        Care to explain why it's €0,05 and not €0,10? I don't think I get it.

        Care to explain why it's €0,05 and not €0,10? I don't think I get it.

        2 votes
        1. [2]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. asoftbird
            Link Parent
            I feel like an idiot now, but that is probably exactly what that test was made for. Thanks.

            I feel like an idiot now, but that is probably exactly what that test was made for. Thanks.

            2 votes
        2. sublime_aenima
          Link Parent
          Bat + Ball = 1.10 Bat - Ball = 1.00 Bat = Ball + 1.00 Substitute Ball + 1.00 + Ball = 1.10 2Ball = 0.10 Ball = 0.05

          Bat + Ball = 1.10

          Bat - Ball = 1.00

          Bat = Ball + 1.00

          Substitute

          Ball + 1.00 + Ball = 1.10

          2Ball = 0.10

          Ball = 0.05

          2 votes
        3. acdw
          Link Parent
          I see I was late to the party -- @sublime_aenima described the problem well. It almost got me, too!

          I see I was late to the party -- @sublime_aenima described the problem well. It almost got me, too!

          1 vote
      3. [3]
        user2
        Link Parent
        Care to explain how you solved the third one?

        Care to explain how you solved the third one?

        1 vote
        1. Papaya
          Link Parent
          The patch doubles everyday. That means the day before it covers the whole lake, it covers half of it. Yeah it's that simple.

          The patch doubles everyday. That means the day before it covers the whole lake, it covers half of it. Yeah it's that simple.

          3 votes
        2. acdw
          Link Parent
          @Papaya got it. It was a real "gotcha" though!

          @Papaya got it. It was a real "gotcha" though!

          1 vote
  2. The_Fad
    Link
    This feels an awful lot like those pop research studies on semen being healthy to ingest/good for curing headaches.

    This feels an awful lot like those pop research studies on semen being healthy to ingest/good for curing headaches.

    5 votes
  3. [12]
    unknown user
    Link
    I am really fed up with this sort of stuff and consider these low quality content, both for journals and Tildes.

    I am really fed up with this sort of stuff and consider these low quality content, both for journals and Tildes.

    5 votes
    1. spit-evil-olive-tips
      Link Parent
      I think questionable studies like this that tend to generate a lot of clickbaity headlines are a great thing to have on Tildes. This study has already been written about in Time, Popular Science,...

      I think questionable studies like this that tend to generate a lot of clickbaity headlines are a great thing to have on Tildes.

      This study has already been written about in Time, Popular Science, New York Times, and The Atlantic.

      Rather than linking to any of those, @Rocket_Man linked to the actual paper itself, and it's generated interesting and skeptical discussion of the findings.

      11 votes
    2. [10]
      Rocket_Man
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      That's really unfortunate to hear as I think this is perfect content for tildes. It's a scientific study in a respected journal not fluff content. I posted it explicitly because I wanted to...

      That's really unfortunate to hear as I think this is perfect content for tildes. It's a scientific study in a respected journal not fluff content. I posted it explicitly because I wanted to discuss it and see what others had to say because I'm skeptical of their findings. Why is this low quality content for tildes?

      10 votes
      1. [8]
        unknown user
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        This is a pseudoscience trope that appears everywhere where low quality content is a staple, and even if there is some truth to it, the results are meaningless. Skimming the paper, the results can...

        This is a pseudoscience trope that appears everywhere where low quality content is a staple, and even if there is some truth to it, the results are meaningless. Skimming the paper, the results can mean a billion things: that women tend to persevere despite heat, or that women concentrate better, or that women tend to feel calmer, or that men are sloppier, or that men perform worse when it is hot, or that men are worse at maths in general, or that men have shorter attention spans, or that... It might even be the clothes they wear that day. And who are these 500-or-so people?

        And what about totally idiotic passages like

        Our results contribute to the growing experimental economics and psychology literature on gender differences. Recent experimental evidence suggests that women are less competitive [21, 22], more risk-averse [23, 24] and more honest [25, 26] than men. There is also some evidence showing that women are more altruistic [27, 28], more cooperative [29] and more emotive in moral dilemma judgments [30] than men.

        which is stupid sexist stereotyping bullshit.

        The title itself gives away how terrible of an article this thing is. The "paper" also refutes itself here:

        Our sample consisted exclusively out of students from universities in Berlin. The advantages of this subject pool is that they are relatively easy to recruit and homogenous in their cognitive skills. The disadvantage of this subject pool is that it is not representative of the whole population with respect to age and education level.

        So a horribly specific sample set.

        We conducted the experiment at the experimental economics laboratory at Technical University Berlin. The sessions took place from 25th of September until 6th of December 2017. In total, we conducted 24 sessions with 23–25 participants a session, depending on the show-up rates.

        The mere fact that seasons changed during the experiment is a glaring flaw.

        If I read a bit more, I'd potentially find more abhorrent stuff in there.

        But at the end this sort of pop-science "research" tells us nothing, is often offensive, and is detrimental to science in that these stuff are caricatures of research into gender and sex, and eats away their legitimacy, harming thus the struggle against gender and sex based discrimination, among other things.

        I don't think there is any reason for giving stuff like this a platform.

        Edit: I'm sorry for the aggressive tone of this comment, I was kinda startled because I thought it was endorsed as good research.

        15 votes
        1. [5]
          Rocket_Man
          Link Parent
          You've made some good points albeit somewhat aggressively. Although you also miss a lot, the results wouldn't be meaningless. Women concentrating better, feeling calmer, men being sloppier,...

          You've made some good points albeit somewhat aggressively. Although you also miss a lot, the results wouldn't be meaningless.

          Skimming the paper, the results can mean a billion things: that women tend to persevere despite heat, or that women concentrate better, or that women tend to feel calmer, or that men are sloppier, or that men perform worse when it is hot, or that men are worse at maths in general, or that men have shorter attention spans, or that... It might even be the clothes they wear that day.

          Women concentrating better, feeling calmer, men being sloppier, performing worse at math, having shorter attention spans, wouldn't matter because temperature was the independent variable while these variables would have remained constant. As for clothing this is somewhat accounted for by using a larger sample size of people with varied clothes. Although it would have been better to control for it.

          So really your left with women persevering despite heat, or men performing worse when it's hot. The later is just a description of their results. So yes, there are other explanations for the discrepancy between men and women besides differences in overall cognitive performance and this is interesting to consider.

          As for the passage about women being more honest and great. Are you disputing the claims their making or criticizing the underlying ideological bias they may be showing? If so I agree it seems biased and only presents positive differences between women and men.

          The sample could be better, but I don't see a clear reason using college students would drastically alter the results.

          I don't think any of the reasons you've presented are compelling enough to completely disregard the entire paper. The study could be improved and their presentation could be made more neutral, but the evidence that women solve math and verbal problems better at higher temperatures seems fairly clear even if the underlying reason is not.

          Lastly as @spit-evil-olive-tips pointed out this study has already been given presented on a broad set of platforms. If people are going to see it I'd rather Tildes be the place to do it where you and I can go through the paper and see what value if any it actually has. Secondly as I pointed out I think a scientific study from a somewhat respectable journal is worth discussing instead of deplatforming. The risk of encouraging an anti-men sentiment seems pretty low.

          7 votes
          1. [4]
            unknown user
            Link Parent
            I don't think there is such risk. The risk is that stuff like this might hinder the reception of other research on gender/sex. I generally desire that the bar for what passes for science be...

            The risk of encouraging an anti-men sentiment seems pretty low.

            I don't think there is such risk. The risk is that stuff like this might hinder the reception of other research on gender/sex. I generally desire that the bar for what passes for science be higher.

            I'm no authority on what is posted on Tildes, and really I am not interested in refuting the research. Guess my original comment was a gut reaction to encountering something like this, and the article itself, and didn't give much thought to what sort of discussion can arise around it, so, sorry about that. But my personal opinion is that articles that are of similar fashion to this (questionable sex-based comparisons of people, almost pseudoscientific reserch methods, clickbaity "findings") are low-quality content, and the intent to discuss it rather than to endorse it should be made obvious through a top-level OP comment, IMHO.

            2 votes
            1. [2]
              eve
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              To be pedantic, I don't think that people posting articles are inherently supporting them or agreeing with them and that's a supposition you have to take up with yourself. I think it's doing a...

              To be pedantic, I don't think that people posting articles are inherently supporting them or agreeing with them and that's a supposition you have to take up with yourself. I think it's doing a disservice to any OP and the content itself in assuming why they posted it.

              Isn't anything posted to tildes inherently meant to be discussed?

              9 votes
              1. unknown user
                Link Parent
                I do agree and am sorry for behaving otherwise. My reaction was rather kneejerky.

                To be pedantic, I don't think that people posting articles are inherently supporting them or agreeing them and that's a supposition you have to take up with yourself. I think it's doing a disservice to any OP and the content itself in assuming why they posted it.

                I do agree and am sorry for behaving otherwise. My reaction was rather kneejerky.

                7 votes
            2. Rocket_Man
              Link Parent
              I'll keep this in mind for the future, one reason I avoided this was I didn't want to start the discussion where it seemed like the entire point of the post was to rag on the study. But I...

              the intent to discuss it rather than to endorse it should be made obvious through a top-level OP comment, IMHO.

              I'll keep this in mind for the future, one reason I avoided this was I didn't want to start the discussion where it seemed like the entire point of the post was to rag on the study. But I understand most people post things they care and fully believe in and some effort needs to be taken to make it clear when that isn't the case.

              1 vote
        2. [2]
          Algernon_Asimov
          Link Parent
          Actually, they compared performances within genders to find that: Among women (not women compared to men, but women compared to themselves), cognitive performance was positively correlated with...

          Skimming the paper, the results can mean a billion things: that women tend to persevere despite heat, or that women concentrate better, or that women tend to feel calmer, or that men are sloppier, or that men perform worse when it is hot, or that men are worse at maths in general, or that men have shorter attention spans, or that... It might even be the clothes they wear that day.

          Actually, they compared performances within genders to find that:

          • Among women (not women compared to men, but women compared to themselves), cognitive performance was positively correlated with increased temperature.

          • Among men (not men compared to women, but men compared to themselves), cognitive performance was negatively correlated with increased temperature.

          Recent experimental evidence suggests that women are less competitive [21, 22], more risk-averse [23, 24] and more honest [25, 26] than men. There is also some evidence showing that women are more altruistic [27, 28], more cooperative [29] and more emotive in moral dilemma judgments [30] than men.

          How is it "stupid sexist stereotyping bullshit" if scientists are finding it in their studies? Every one of those bracketed numbers is a link to a study which showed these results. Are you implying that science itself is sexist?

          So a horribly specific sample set.

          ... which is actually a good thing if you're trying to measure the effect of one particular difference. If they were a multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural, multigenerational group, then the final results would have to be adjusted for all sorts of demographic factors to make them useful. But if all the test subjects are the same except for being men and women, then it's easier to identify differences caused by being men and women.

          But at the end this sort of pop-science "research" tells us nothing, is often offensive, and is detrimental to science in that these stuff are caricatures of research into gender and sex, and eats away their legitimacy, harming thus the struggle against gender and sex based discrimination, among other things.

          The sexes are different. That is a biological and scientific fact. Identifying those differences is a useful thing for science to do.

          However, the issue of how we treat the sexes, whether equally or unequally, is a moral matter and not a scientific one. We can decide that all dogs are worthy of protection from animal cruelty, even though a Great Dane is quite different to a Dachshund, because those biological differences are not relevant to the moral question of treating all dogs equally. Similarly, the biological differences between men and women are not relevant to the moral question of treating all humans equally.

          On a side note: identifying the neurological differences between female brains and male brains is actually building a scientific case to support the argument that transgender people are actually the gender they say they are... because their brains are similar to the gender they claim to be, rather than the gender everyone else thinks they are. So, identifying sex and gender differences can have positive outcomes for progressive causes.

          Science is not political. People misusing scientific information is political.

          5 votes
          1. eladnarra
            Link Parent
            Sort of off topic, but this could cause problems if it's not 100% accurate. (And as far as I understand it, brain differences are seen across populations, and might not be applicable to...

            On a side note: identifying the neurological differences between female brains and male brains is actually building a scientific case to support the argument that transgender people are actually the gender they say they are... because their brains are similar to the gender they claim to be, rather than the gender everyone else thinks they are. So, identifying sex and gender differences can have positive outcomes for progressive causes.

            Sort of off topic, but this could cause problems if it's not 100% accurate. (And as far as I understand it, brain differences are seen across populations, and might not be applicable to individuals.)

            Trans folks already face a bunch of gatekeeping when it comes to accessing healthcare and being able to transition in the ways that they want to. If we start assuming that something will show up on brain scans, validating their gender, this could be used to deny treatments to people who don't fit that mold. It also ignores non-binary folks entirely.

            4 votes
      2. JakeTheDog
        Link Parent
        Not that I agree with cadadr, but PLoS has gone downhill in the past 3-5 years and isn't really a respected journal anymore - qualitatively based on what many colleagues have been saying and my...

        Not that I agree with cadadr, but PLoS has gone downhill in the past 3-5 years and isn't really a respected journal anymore - qualitatively based on what many colleagues have been saying and my own suspicions and quantitatively by it's decline in impact factor. Though this Retraction Watch article (highly recommend the site) shows promise that it may once again be a good journal. It had a great start, though.

        At any rate, and article should not necessarily be judged by the quality of the journal, but rather the methods and claims themselves.

        4 votes
  4. [7]
    Pilgrim
    (edited )
    Link
    My father did testing like this for the military but at much more extreme temperature ranges. Interesting stuff. I'm curious if this wasn't approached with an agenda though... EDIT: Nevermind. I...

    My father did testing like this for the military but at much more extreme temperature ranges. Interesting stuff. I'm curious if this wasn't approached with an agenda though...

    EDIT: Nevermind. I think this is 100% legit with a nice p value. From the study:

    The coefficients from the linear specification indicate that a one-degree Celsius increase in ambient temperature is associated with 0.17 (1.76%) increase in the number of math questions correctly answered by women (p-value < 0.001)

    I think the people on here (like I was) calling the study into question are just reading the conclusion and, because it deals with the age-old fight for the thermostat, crying foul. It looks legit to me, but I'd like to see the study done in different geographies.

    3 votes
    1. [6]
      The_Fad
      Link Parent
      I can't speak for anyone else but, in the interest of full disclosure, I was basing my opinion on the study as a whole, rather than its conclusion. There are some "interesting" p-values in the...

      I can't speak for anyone else but, in the interest of full disclosure, I was basing my opinion on the study as a whole, rather than its conclusion. There are some "interesting" p-values in the other types of studies I mentioned as well, but they don't really pan out with attempted replication or the difference is so small as to be negligible.

      1. [5]
        Pilgrim
        Link Parent
        Are you seeing other studies that contradict this? I'm trying to understand what you found objectionable.

        don't really pan out with attempted replication or the difference is so small as to be negligible.

        Are you seeing other studies that contradict this? I'm trying to understand what you found objectionable.

        1 vote
        1. [4]
          The_Fad
          Link Parent
          This is the only study I've seen on the matter; I'm not objecting to the study, just clarifying my reasoning for having doubts.

          This is the only study I've seen on the matter; I'm not objecting to the study, just clarifying my reasoning for having doubts.

          1 vote
          1. [3]
            Pilgrim
            Link Parent
            Sorry to be dense. I guess I just don't understand why you have doubts.

            Sorry to be dense. I guess I just don't understand why you have doubts.

            1 vote
            1. [2]
              The_Fad
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              No need to apologize, I didn't mean to protract the conversation like this. Let's just call it good; my point is ultimately irrelevant anyway, I suppose.

              No need to apologize, I didn't mean to protract the conversation like this. Let's just call it good; my point is ultimately irrelevant anyway, I suppose.

              1 vote
  5. mrbig
    Link
    Does that mean climate change is a feminist ploy to turn all men into mindless slaves? :P

    Does that mean climate change is a feminist ploy to turn all men into mindless slaves? :P

    1 vote