• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Are Men Naturally Better Navigators Than Women? Study Disproves Old Belief

January 17, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Men are naturally better navigators than women, right? It’s a pervasive assumption that has become deeply ingrained in Western thinking. But it may not be completely true. According to a new and comprehensive study, there is good reason to doubt that any apparent difference between the wayfinding abilities of males and females is due to natural selection. In short, if there are differences, then it has nothing to do with men having evolved to be better.

Existing research has focused on spatial cognition, where hundreds of studies, and a few meta-analyses, have accumulated results that can be summed as this: males outperform females in a statistically significant way in multiple spatial tasks and to varying degrees.

Advertisement

The idea is pretty popular, the authors explain. “The tendency to explain sex differences as products of natural selection is especially common in evolutionary psychology, where there is a long-standing preoccupation with cognitive sex differences.”

The standard explanation, known as the sex-specific adaptation hypothesis, explains this by comparison to other species, especially those where the males have larger home size ranges (the size of the area an animal travels in during its daily activities) than females. In these instances, it is assumed that males experience more selection for wayfinding skills than females.

To test this explanatory hypothesis, US researchers from various organizations examined the differences in wayfinding in 21 different species, including humans, and compared the sizes of their home ranges.

Some of the animals they examined included Asian small-clawed otters, brilliant-thighed poison frogs, Californian mice, chimpanzees, rats, horses, giant pandas, and various species of voles.

Advertisement

The results revealed very little evidence of sex differences in home range size that correlated with how well each species navigated.

“Over the past half-century, significant resources have gone into testing the sex-specific adaptation hypothesis as an explanation for sex differences in navigation abilities,” the authors wrote. “In a previous meta-analysis, we found the evidence was weak, and in this paper with an expanded dataset, we again find little evidence supporting the sex-specific adaptation hypothesis.”

Sex differences in behavior or performance can arise from biological or cultural factors, neither of which necessarily stem from evolution in all instances. In particular, the brain’s plasticity means it’s particularly good at restructuring, a factor that is often ignored.

In particular, evolutionary psychologists consider a trait as innate if it is culturally universal, but that does not hold with spatial skills.  

Advertisement

“Recent evidence in subsistence populations strongly suggests that sex difference in spatial navigation in humans is not a cultural universal”, the authors explain. “Rather, it disappears in cultures where males and females have similar ranging behaviour.”

“We believe that future research on human sex differences in navigation should focus on the role of socialization and culture, rather than evolutionary genetic factors.”

The paper is published in Royal Society Open Science.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Taliban say they have entered capital of holdout Afghan region
  2. Over 60 S.Korean crypto exchanges set to suspend services next week
  3. Private groups aiding thousands in Afghanistan worry about dwindling funds
  4. Japan’s Prime Minister Eats Fukushima Fish To Prove It’s Safe

Source Link: Are Men Naturally Better Navigators Than Women? Study Disproves Old Belief

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “She Would See That Face Morph Into The Face Of A Dragon”: Strange Tales From Neuroscience At CURIOUS Live
  • A Giant Mountain Range Has Been Hidden Under Antarctica’s Ice For Millions Of Years
  • Why Did Ancient Silver Coins Have Owls On Them?
  • Ancient Humans May Have Survived In Isolated Northern Scotland During Extreme Cooling 12,000 Years Ago
  • In The Year 536 CE, A Truly Miserable Period Of Human History Began
  • Why Is The Uncanny Valley So Frightening? And What One Frowny Robot Is Doing To Overcome It
  • 5-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Ice Core Contains Sample Of Air From The Pliocene Epoch
  • Flamingos Make Tiny Tornadoes In Water To Trap Their Prey
  • Off The Coast Of California Strange And Regular Circular Structures Line The Ocean Floor
  • Jupiter’s Aurorae Change Faster Than Previously Thought – But There’s Something Even Odder Going On
  • US Measles Cases Pass 1,000, Speeding Towards Worst Outbreaks Since 2019
  • UMa3/U1: Is This The Smallest Galaxy Ever Discovered, Or Something Else?
  • A Flying Car That Can Reach Over 155 MPH In Air Might Come To Market In 2026
  • World-First 3D-Printed Skin Robot Aims To Help Burn Patients In Australia
  • Dramatic Video Shows “First-Ever” Fault Movement Surface Rupture Caught On Camera
  • Migraine Drug Could Be First To Treat Symptoms That Come Before The Headache
  • You’re Not Actually Supposed To Rinse Your Mouth After Brushing Your Teeth
  • 170 Years On, Thoreau’s Detailed Diaries Have A Lot To Teach Us About The Seasons
  • Obsidian Blades At The Main Aztec Temple Came From Enemy Territory
  • Humans Glow, And It’s A Light That Probably Goes Out When We Die
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version