Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Are Men Better at Chess Than Women?

Somehow I think that a U.S. News Agency wouldn't be able to get away with this article:

Excerpt:

The study conducted by Dr Robert Howard from the University of New South Wales, which appears in the Journal of Biosocial Science states that despite changes in society, access to opportunities to develop their intellectual prowess, women do not do well in chess.

The study states that men who have traditionally dominated at upper levels of intellectual achievement have an inborn ability to checkmate and win a game of chess, reports ABC Online.

Dr Howard states that not only are all recognized geniuses all male, but the fact is that more men have won Nobel Prizes and other awards in the field of science, adding that evolutionary male psychology of competitiveness and dominance also has a part to play in this.

"The basic argument is that if there are not any differences between the sexes in the area of chess, we should be seeing a convergence, ie. more female high achievers. But we're not. We're still seeing a huge difference of extremes," the journal quoted Dr Howard as saying.

Dr Howard who says that his study has nothing to do with the miniscule presence of female role models in chess and that though in the last few years, the top 10 female players have achieved very high ratings, the fact remained that they were greatly outperformed by the top 10 male players.

"The top 10 females over the last few years have achieved very high ratings ... and many have achieved the grandmaster title as well, which requires good visuospatial ability, but are still greatly outperformed by the top 10 males," he added. (ANI)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home