What do a Graphic Designer, Architect, Chef, and Surgeon have in common? They all require great visual-spatial skills. Visual-spatial skills include things such as spatial perception, spatial visualization, spatial attention, and mental rotation and spatial location memory. These skills apparently aren’t for everyone, however, and science has tried to find GENDER differences in the abilities of visual spatial skills of men and women. In all the skills, men are supposedly excelling at them more than women, except for spatial location memory (“Gender differences in cognitive abilities?”). There are some questionable theories behind these allegations. One innate theory includes the prenatal hormone theory, which encompasses two hypotheses: the greater male lateralization hypothesis and the “spotlight” vs. “floodlight” brain hypothesis. Another theory to describe the differences is the socialization theory of stereotype threat. This is one I would like to focus on in this post.
Research on innate theory for visual-spatial skills different in men and women is inconclusive. However, there are socialization theories of gender differences in visual-spatial abilities, that seem to focus on an entirely different issue: stereotypes threats. A stereotype threat is being in a situation where you are at risk of being treated undesirably by yourself confirming an adverse stereotype, of any certain group that you seem to belong in. I have personally felt the pressures of stereotype threats against women in areas such as math, science, and sports. In each of those areas I have been compared to males in my performance, which causes me to think about what my true potential could have been if I had instead had people encouraging me and campaigning no differences between genders. In the case of gender differences for visual-spatial tasks, this stereotype threat seems to hinder the performance of some women (“Gender differences in cognitive abilities?”). This has been tested in studies that show how priming true to stereotypes is causing women’s performance to suffer (“Gender differences in cognitive abilities?”). Priming in these cases is exposing these women to the stereotype (whether it is false or true, such as women perform lesser on a certain task) before the task, and then seeing how this effects their performance on the task. To test visual-spatial skill, Fine reported a study done by Mathew McGlone and Joshua Aronson that primed college students with either a gender stereotype that men perform better on the given task, or that students at a certain liberal arts college performed better than normal (2010). The results of the study revealed that men performed better than women when the students were primed with gender, while in the group of students primed with their collegiate identity, there was no gender difference in the scores of the mental rotation task (Fine, 2010). Fine cites many other studies done with priming unfavorably against women that also have to do with mathematics abilities and performance on SAT tests (Fine, 2010). One thing to be noticed in these studies of stereotype threat is that they usually capitalize on the established cultural stereotypes against women (Fine, 2010). This would cause me to wonder how much these predetermined typecasts would be an extra factor in the already stereotype threat-ridden performance of the women in these studies.
Another point that Fine brought up with stereotype threat was the concept of “knowing-and being” (Fine, 2010). This concept means there is something you believe to be true about yourself (whether it is actually true or not), and this belief becomes reality through your actions. The problem is that this belief can come from negative outside sources. For example, this idea of knowing that you are an identifiable part of a negative stereotype caused women to have lower expectations on their performance, as well as cloud their minds with negative thoughts and anxieties (Fine, 2010). In addition to these fears, the fear of failure caused women being tested to be cautious and conservative in their performance (Fine, 2010). Hearing this was interesting, because these are words that have been used by society to describe female’s personalities and work ethics. The idea that women could be described this way because they are working around fear and anxiety is disturbing. These extra processes of worry and anxiety made it harder for the working memory of these women under threat to help them perform the task at hand to the best of their abilities (Fine, 2010). The socialization theory of stereotype threat is one that seems to repeatedly cause a gender difference in visual-spatial abilities, as well as many others.
Stereotype threat and priming are examples of how there are not innate differences in men’s and women’s visual-spatial skills.
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