Of men and maths

There is a large gender gap in the amount of people pursuing what are called the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Men are much more likely to have a career in these fields but as new research shows it is not necessarily because they are better at mathematics based fields but because they think they are.

Two studies were undertaken in this new research involving more than 300 people. In both studies people completed a math test and then estimated how they had gone on the test.

In the first study the subjects received feedback about their actual test scores before they were again asked to take a test and predict their test score.

In the second study the subjects simply completed one math test without receiving any feedback and were then asked to estimate how well they thought they had done.

Both studies showed that men overestimated the number of problems they had solved while women were quite accurate as to the number they had solved. After feedback in the first study men were more accurate at estimating how they had done on the second test. The second study showed that men believed they had a greater skill in maths than they actually did and were more likely to pursue careers in maths related fields than women.

These results suggest two things; on the one hand it is important to reinforce to girls that they can do maths at an early age and on the other hand it shows the power of believing. This latter point is not a metaphysical one, although there may be energistic elements to it, but the reality is that if you believe you can do something then your behaviour will be different to if you believe you can’t do it and the results will be positive. In other words; believing is being.