COOL UNDER PRESSURE

IN HIGH-OCTANE situations — such as competitive sports — women are more likely to keep their cool. A 2017 study of more than 8,000 men’s and women’s tennis matches found that males buckled under the pressure more frequently. Even if women did falter in a crucial stage of a match, researchers found that their drop in performance was 50 per cent smaller than that of men. Though men and women rarely play competitively against one another, it vindicates the infamous ‘Battle of the Sexes’ between tennis players Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973. After Riggs declared that a woman could never beat a man, King thrashed him in three straight sets. The same advantage applies to other highpressure scenarios, such as exams (girls consistently do better than boys) and job interviews (women are a third more likely to be hired).