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Men 'smarter' than women

26-08-2005

The Australian

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16387881-39555,00.html

 

HALF the population will dismiss this story - but a new study claims the

cleverest people are far more likely to be male than female.

Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average,

making them better suited for tasks of high complexity, according to the

authors of a paper due to be published in the British Journal of

Psychology.

 

Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped explain why

many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters,

the study by Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn concludes.

 

They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as

intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125,

typical for people with first-class degrees.

 

When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for

every woman.

 

Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester

University, said he was uncomfortable with the findings. However, he said,

the evidence was clear, despite the insistence of many academics that

there were no meaningful gender differences in levels of intelligence.

 

"For personal reasons I would like to believe men and women are equal, and

broadly that's true," he said. "But over a period of time the evidence in

favour of biological factors has become stronger and stronger.

 

"I have been dragged in a direction that I don't particularly like, but it

would be sensible if the debate was based on what we pretty much know to

be the case."

 

The findings come from a study of 24,000 British students.

 

Professor Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of

Ulster, is no stranger to inflammatory conclusions as the author of

several publications arguing there are differences in intelligence between

racial groups.

 

He published a study in 2003 that identified a clear correlation between

the levels of prosperity in 60 countries and the average IQ of their

populations.

 

Professor Lynn argued in a letter to The Psychologist this month that

differences between the sexes were explained by a link between IQ and

brain size.

 

"Men have larger brains than women by about 10 per cent and larger brains

confer greater brain power," he said.

 

"So men must necessarily be on average more intelligent than women."