Bigger Brains in Men Out-Performs Women on IQ Test

Are we dating back to the often criticised phrenology? This is 21st century and research says bigger brains put men ahead of women in IQ spectrum. Are bigger brains now necessarily smarter or could be just a causal-relationship?

Courtesy: Naij.com

Might seem insignificant though, research reveals that men’s average IQ score is four points higher than women’s. Why? Men have bigger brain. What the heck is this science? Could we trust it despite the rants in neuroscience and psychology literatures piled up? However, the findings seem plausible to some reasonable extent, since it utilized a large sample of 896 people of varied sex who were subjected to a battery of intelligence tests.

How did researchers discovered this?
By utilising a sample of 896 subjects and have their intelligence tested, placing them on IQ test of varied batteries.

Research into human IQ — long one of the most controversial areas of science — has produced a new set of suitably awkward results.

According to Professor Dimitri van der Linden, of Erasmus University in Rotterdam,

We found that the average IQ of men was about four points above that of women. So if men had an average score of 100, women would score 96.

Van der Linden said his view was that such contradictions were best settled by great information, so he and his partners utilized nitty gritty MRI sweeps of individuals matured in the vicinity of 22 and 37 to quantify the volume of their brains, the ranges of their cerebral cortex — related with cognizant considerations and activities — and different components. They likewise measured IQ.

They found that men had a normal brain volume of 1.2 liters contrasted and 1 liter for ladies. The surface range of men’s cerebral cortex was 1850 sq cm against 1630 sq cm for ladies. A key finding was that in both men and ladies, individuals with bigger brains had marginally higher IQ scores.

The research coincides with a new book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story, whose author, Angela Saini, is sharply critical of it.

According to her:

It is scientifically well established that there is no difference on average in general intelligence between women and men. It’s also well known that women have, on average, slightly smaller brains than men because they are, on average, slightly smaller in size. This paper does not disprove these facts.

Also that,

For more than 100 years, male anatomists and neuroscientists have sought to find evidence of women’s intellectual inferiority by comparing their brains to those of men. It’s surprising that in the 21st century those efforts haven’t ended.

In many centuries back, scientists debated on similar variables but had spurious or no data to back up their claim about sex differences and IQ, could there have been significant differences they missed in the past. While this new findings says something about IQ and sex, it also stregthens criticisms in sexist circle.

Explore further:
Jonathan Leake (2017). Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/bigger-brains-put-men-ahead-of-women-in-the-iq-stakes-says-research/news-story/0d57e2c29eceeebf7bc2307aeba84619