Washington Post: Psychologists have long said that men tend to be better than women at spatial tasks, like mentally picturing and manipulating shapes. Hundreds of studies spanning several decades have shown that on average, men score higher on tests asking them to rotate objects in their heads.
This is one of the few persistent and significant differences scientists have discovered between the brains of men and women....
Researchers at the University of Tromsø in Norway recently published a study showing that men are better than women at assembling IKEA furniture.
They were inspired by comments a few years ago from Petra Hesser, then the head of IKEA’s Germany division. Hesser claimed that the conventional wisdom was wrong. She argued that women were better than men at putting together the furniture because they are more organized and pay attention to the manual.
“Men never look at the instruction leaflet and have the most problems when assembling our furniture because they think they can do it without help,” Hesser said to a German news agency in 2008.
"A woman will neatly lay out all the screws while a man will throw them in a pile,” Hesser said. “Something always goes missing."
And yet, when the Norwegian researchers sought to test Hesser’s claim, they found that she wasn’t quite right.
11 comments:
"...men are better than women at assembling IKEA furniture."
Yea, I'm not gonna go around bragging about that. I'll stick with the voting record in the last two elections as proof of male superiority.
And yet, when the Norwegian researchers sought to test Hesser’s claim, they found that she wasn’t quite right.
That must be a babblefish translation of "She's full of S#!t'
What a load. I had my daughter put together her simple IKEA nightstand on her own, just so she could get her hands dirty and following the simple pictorial instructions. I told her, just look at the instructions and line everything up just like the pictures and it should go together without a problem. I didn't think this was possible, but she built it backwards. No joke. It's still in her bedroom. I double epic facepalmed and blamed IKEA instead. :D
From my experience, the study surely had to have a few ladies that just said: "Oh hell no. I can't do that. Get one of those guys to do it." How did they count those? If you only count willing women, then that study is not very useful.
Its actually worse than shown because they stopped counting at 30 minutes. The article tries to minimize the whole thing by saying that despite the average, plenty of women are better than plenty of men at doing this.
I confess...I usually read manuals last. Don't need to line up screws and parts because I know what each is and where they usually go. But, yep, I occasionally get stuff backwards, too. My better half uses manuals and gets it right about 95% of the time and faster than me. Laughter ensues. I've been known to "drag my feet" and wait for her to do the chore...usually works.
OT question: In my neighborhood the city sets off fireworks every night during these holidays between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM. WTF is that about? Anyone else have that pleasure? Right now sounds like mortar fire just west of me :-) It'll end in 5 minutes. Who "watches" these displays? I've looked and found no one....except maybe a very few folks inside The Henry Ford (e.g., Greenfield Village & and the Henry Ford Museum compound.)
Reading the instructions is cheating. It's like asking for directions. What could possibly go wrong?
Aridog- Sorry the fireworks are not to your liking, I love them- anytime of year.
But you might have a point if its every night.
What Allen S said...it's cheating!!
Jim ... fireworks are okay, I just don't get the connection to the Christmas and Chanukah (sic) holidays? In my neighborhood, mostly Arab, fireworks are almost a weekly event ... so I'm rather used to them. New Years Eve sounds like a war zone around here :-)
Only the sky rockets that tip over and bounce off some guy's house irritate me, especially if my house...why do some people set them up all wobbly in the street center?
Yeah, I know...I am a grump :-)
I hate to admit it, but I'm a manual reader for a couple of reason. There may be some nuance in the product that I'm not aware of that I'd like to know. Secondly, I'm giving respect to the people who put those manuals together. It's not an easy job. It really isn't.
I used to enjoy eschewing the directions, as my fathers before me did, to figure it out on our own. I usually did alright. Every now and then, I'd hit a snag and reluctantly find the discarded instructions. As I got better at them, I took the Meth approach... I read directions now, usually once, and then get to work. Something I try to impart specifically on my male students- one of the manliest things you can do is learn to ask for help.
(Lost? We're not lost! I know exactly where we are. We're in the woods.)
In the same topic, I am sick of put-it-together made-in-china sh*t that I will build it(whatever it is) myself from wood in the garage. How do women pair up against men in engineering and constructing furniture from scratch? (Although not completely... youtube...)
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