Men see themselves as smarter in scientific fields, study finds
It’s no secret that men are overrepresented in certain technical disciplines. So is their self-confidence, a new study suggests.
The study, published this past week in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, found that male egos eclipse those of women among students asked to compare themselves with their classmates.
A male student with an average grade, for example, was predicted to see himself as smarter than 66 percent of his class, according to the study. A female student with the same grade was expected to see herself as smarter than only 54 percent of her class.
That difference is even more pronounced when students compare themselves with individual peers: Men were more than three times as likely as women to say they were smarter than the classmate with whom they worked most closely.
The findings are particularly noteworthy given that they are based on students studying biology, one of the few scientific disciplines where women are overrepresented.
“It’s not simply enough to count up the number of students in the class and say, ‘Well, we have representation of women; women’s experiences in biology are exactly the same as men,’ because what we’re seeing is they’re not,” said Sara Brownell, an assistant professor at the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, who wrote the study with Katelyn Cooper, a graduate student at the school.
The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that points to a large gender gap in fields related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known collectively as STEM fields.
While the study was based on students in a single class, it underscored how differently men and women in science perceive their abilities. Such selfperceptions can have cascading effects on motivation, participation and confidence.
For the study, the authors focused on 202 students in an upper-level physiology class at the university that employed an active learning approach, emphasizing participation, particularly in small-group discussions. Of the group, 130 students were women, 70 were men and two identified in a separate category.