Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-9k27k Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T19:42:52.385Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Authors Offer Counterpoints but Field Lacks Proof That Sociopolitical Variables Cause Gender Differences in Cognition

Gender Differences in Human Cognition, by P.J. Caplan, M. Crawford, J.S. Hyde, and J.T.E. Richardson. 1997. New York: Oxford University Press. 182 pp., $19.95 (PB).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1999

Jeannette McGlone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University and Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Within the first pages, the authors focus their scholarly energies on verbal, spatial, and mathematical abilities because, we are told, researchers typically have searched for individual differences within such test domains. All four authors provide highly readable 30-page chapters, each taking a variation on the same perspective, i.e., that whatever cognitive differences you thought had been demonstrated between males and females should not be considered biological because (1) cognitive abilities cannot be defined; (2) narrative and meta-analytical reviews have serious limitations as did the research designs of the original studies, and (3) experience, training, expectations, attitudes, preferences, power, status, and domination can influence scores on tests. Knowing the premise in advance sets the reader looking for tight logic and empirical support in favor of the sociopolitical model. Over the past 20 years we all have been subjected to media hype surrounding any claim of biological explanations for sex differences in cognition.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 1999 The International Neuropsychological Society