In relation to men and women, our most basic stereotypical expectation is simply that they will be different rather than the same. We actively look for differences, and seek out resources which discuss them. Faced with claims like BT’s ‘men stand up to make phone calls whereas women sit down’, our first reaction is more likely to be ‘how interesting’ than ‘what nosense’ or ‘who cares?’ We are much less attentive to, and less interested in hearing about, similarities between men and women. And this has consequences, not only for our everyday conversations, but also for what goes on in the supposedly more objective realm of science.
Most rearch studies investigating the behaviour of men and women are designed around the question: ‘is there a difference?’-and the presumption is usually that there will be. If a study finds a significant difference between male and fenale subjects(in other words, a result which statistical tests show could not have been produced by chance), that is considered to be a ‘positive’ finding, and has a good chance of being published in a scientific journal. A study which finds no significant differences is less likely to be published. This means that some negative findings are never even submitted for publication. It also means that if a study has examined a large number of variables and found positive results for only one or two of them, it will be the least typical, positive findings which the researchers emphasize.
The preference for positive findings is on one level understable. A report which says, in essence, ‘we looked for something and didn’t find it’ does not make for compelling reading. But if the research was competently designed and carried out, whatever it finds must surely count as knowledge. ‘Men and women did not perform any differently on task X’ is no less a fact than ‘men and women performed significantly differently on task X’. If findings that confirm male-female differences get published more often than findings that disconfirm those differences, the resulting research literature will systematically distort the picture.
Deborah Cameron, “The Myth of Mars and Venus”.
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