There is some evidence that boys and men have greater math ability than girls and women. (Don't worry - similar evidence says that the females have greater language ability.) Of course, that doesn't mean that all males can do math better than all females. There is going to be overlap where some females are better than some males. I don't know about the "effect size", which is how much difference has been found. It might be quite small.
But the other day, I read of an experiment conducted by a UW-Whitewater psychologist and her colleagues that caught my imagination. Dr. Shen Zhang and her associates gave math exams to both male and female college students. The exams for the females already had names on them, some male names and some female names. The women with male names on their exams did better than those working under female aliases.
One of the reasons this result intrigued me was that the last chapter of "The Body Keeps the Score" is a moving account of people healing from traumatic experiences through drama. With the help of acting coaches and experienced actors, traumatized people find ways to bridge the terrible memory and the locked-away parts of their minds, gaining some comfort and mastery over their wounding experience.
I often wonder how I can get my mind to do what I want. Say I want to be a merrier person that I typically am. Normally, I would be telling myself "Merrier!, Merrier!" But since I am not typically merry, I may have difficulty thinking of how to be merry. However, if I pretend to be Marlo Thomas or Mary Tyler Moore or merry old Santa, I can see how to take on the role of a merrier person. Then, I don't have to be merrier. I only have to play the role well. When I play a role, I don't have to think about me but just the character and personality of my temporary self.
People are famous for self-deception. Fathers think they are more loving than they are. Teens think they have a better handle on the world than they do. People have evidence staring them in the face that they conveniently ignore. There are many kinds of self-deception but maybe consciously trying to adopt a character once in a while can harness the possibilities more effectively.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
