4 ms·

Our Brains See Men as Whole and Women as Parts

26 points by mikeleeorg 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
It's an interesting idea. But the European Journal of Social Psychology is currently beset with a number of articles that have had to be retracted, http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/three-more-retractions-for-diederik-stapel/ http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/three-more-r... so of all the relevant journals, I especially doubt the acumen of its editors and peer reviewers. Before I would believe a finding like this, I would check it against the full checklist "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, and I would definitely want to see replication of the result by other researchers, published in better journals, with lots of critique and refinement of the experimental method before accepting this finding as a fact about the external world of how most people's brains work.
- zeroonetwothree 14y ago
  In particular, from Norvig's page: "As another example, many psychology experiments are run on volunteer college students. Often an experimenter gets a result from such an experiment and claims it is valid across all people, but later finds out that the result only holds for (a) people roughly 20 years old or (b) people with the skills and dedication necessary to be a college student or (c) the type of people who like to volunteer for things."
- stfu 14y ago
  I would definitely want to see replication of the result by other researchers, published in better journals Is there any chance that this is going to happen? From my experience of reading (more social science) oriented journals it seems super rare that someone is actually interested in replicating someone else's results.
sp332 14y ago
I'm not sure why the researchers assume that this is sexual. They even designed one of the tests with only sexualized body parts in play. The experiments are about objectification, but there's no experiment here that could even verify whether it's sexual.
- gph 14y ago
  Yea, from reading the article it seems like the entire test was bent towards a sexual angle. Perhaps they've already done some more neutral tests and this one came after those, but it feels like they were leading the results with the format of the test.
zeroonetwothree 14y ago
Link to paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.1890/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.1890/abstrac... It's gated so I wasn't able to actually read it.
crazygringo 14y ago
There's another very plausible explanation: Womens' clothing and appearance varies much more. Men don't have the choice of 15 different kinds of clothing tops and bottoms, whereas women do, plus accessories, much wider variety of hairstyles, makeup, etc. Plus they tend to put a lot more effort into choosing them. So in recognizing photos of women, there are a lot more unique "local" details to help you remember things. Making the leap to women being "objectified" more seems to be editorializing this way more than is deserved.
monicaemiller 14y ago
Women are shapely. They are easier to dissect into sum of parts. Men, however, are rather square in form, discounting obesity. This is more a reflection of how we memorize shapes rather than a commentary of evolutionary objectification.
jinushaun 14y ago
There's an aura of Victorian-era sexual guilt around what is described by the research as a natural by-product of evolution.

26 points by mikeleeorg 14y ago

It's an interesting idea. But the European Journal of Social Psychology is currently beset with a number of articles that have had to be retracted, http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/three-more-retractions-for-diederik-stapel/ http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/three-more-r... so of all the relevant journals, I especially doubt the acumen of its editors and peer reviewers. Before I would believe a finding like this, I would check it against the full checklist "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, and I would definitely want to see replication of the result by other researchers, published in better journals, with lots of critique and refinement of the experimental method before accepting this finding as a fact about the external world of how most people's brains work.

zeroonetwothree 14y ago
In particular, from Norvig's page: "As another example, many psychology experiments are run on volunteer college students. Often an experimenter gets a result from such an experiment and claims it is valid across all people, but later finds out that the result only holds for (a) people roughly 20 years old or (b) people with the skills and dedication necessary to be a college student or (c) the type of people who like to volunteer for things."
stfu 14y ago
I would definitely want to see replication of the result by other researchers, published in better journals Is there any chance that this is going to happen? From my experience of reading (more social science) oriented journals it seems super rare that someone is actually interested in replicating someone else's results.

sp332 14y ago

I'm not sure why the researchers assume that this is sexual. They even designed one of the tests with only sexualized body parts in play. The experiments are about objectification, but there's no experiment here that could even verify whether it's sexual.

gph 14y ago
Yea, from reading the article it seems like the entire test was bent towards a sexual angle. Perhaps they've already done some more neutral tests and this one came after those, but it feels like they were leading the results with the format of the test.

zeroonetwothree 14y ago

Link to paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.1890/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.1890/abstrac... It's gated so I wasn't able to actually read it.

crazygringo 14y ago

There's another very plausible explanation: Womens' clothing and appearance varies much more. Men don't have the choice of 15 different kinds of clothing tops and bottoms, whereas women do, plus accessories, much wider variety of hairstyles, makeup, etc. Plus they tend to put a lot more effort into choosing them. So in recognizing photos of women, there are a lot more unique "local" details to help you remember things. Making the leap to women being "objectified" more seems to be editorializing this way more than is deserved.

monicaemiller 14y ago

Women are shapely. They are easier to dissect into sum of parts. Men, however, are rather square in form, discounting obesity. This is more a reflection of how we memorize shapes rather than a commentary of evolutionary objectification.

jinushaun 14y ago

There's an aura of Victorian-era sexual guilt around what is described by the research as a natural by-product of evolution.