"In this study, we use a large-scale incentivized experiment with nearly 1,300 participants to show that the gender gap in spatial abilities, measured by time to solve a puzzle, disappears when we move from a patrilineal society to an adjoining matrilineal society."
It is presently a commonplace of Western culture that women are worse at spatial reasoning than men, and this is commonly attributed to intrinsic biological differences.
It turns out this may be highly questionable. A study in PNAS studied two nearby tribes in northeast India, one with a strongly patriarchal organisation, one with a strongly matriarchal organisation. Both share the same agrarian diet and lifestyle and DNA tests indicate they are closely related.
In the patriarchal society, women did noticeably worse on spatial reasoning. In the matriarchal society, women and men did about the same.
The authors carefully do not overstate their results, claiming only that they demonstrated that culture influences spatial performance "in the task that we study." However, this promisingly suggests quite a bit of room for improvement of measurable aspects of intelligence may be feasible with proper attention to culture and nurture.
What measurable aspects of intelligence do you attribute to genetic causes? Can you test it this well? How would you fix it and help people be all they can be?
News coverage: ArsTechnica.
Reporter's Headline: Gender Differences in Muscular Ability Appear to be Nurture
Hypothetical Study abstract:
It's politically desirable to minimize the role of biology. Finding other factors relevant implies biology is less important, well and good. But for a study that implies both biology and culture important to be cited as simply showing culture important would be misleading.
If patriarchy helps men/hurts women, why wouldn't matriarchy help women/hurt men? If it's because of biological differences, there's our biological difference. If it's because the cultures were not symmetrical, OK, though that seriously weakens the study and prevents us from being able to compare a given sex across the cultures.
It appears that patriarchy gives men an advantage over women, yet matriarchy does not give women an advantage over men. This seems akin to saying men's moderate exercising makes men stronger than women, yet women's moderate exercising makes women as strong as men. A conclusion is that exercise is important for strength, although there is something fishy about simply saying that when asked how important exercise and genetics/gender are for strength.