Women's Intuition

[Abandon]

Fun article in the guardian....

Tim Radford, science editor

Tuesday April 12, 2005

The Guardian

Women are not more intuitive than men: they just think they are. A national internet experiment involving more than 15,000 people has confirmed that women are no better than men at spotting which smile is a fake, which sincere.

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, challenged Britons to log on to a website, (www.sciencefestival.co.uk), study a series of partly masked photographs, and decide which smiles were from the heart, which ones calculated.

Asked before the challenge, 77% of women classified themselves as "highly intuitive". Only 58% of men made the same claim. But performance did not match self-perception. Men spotted 72% of the genuine smiles, women 71%.

Feminine intuition failed even more signally when it came to reading men's faces. Men, it turned out, could correctly detect 76% of the fake female smiles.

Women spotted only 67% of the dissembled smirks by the opposite sex.

"These findings question the notion that women really are more intuitive than men. Some previous research has found evidence for female intuition, but perhaps over time men have become more in touch with their intuitive side," Prof Wiseman said.

The participants found it hardest to unmask fake smiles when the mouth was covered.

From the Buddhist forum :- If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound

Alternative version:- If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong ..

(Who said 'probably' ?)

[RDN]

There's another test you can take for spotting fake smiles here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/min...les/index.shtml

I failed miserably - 12 out of 20!

[Kringle]

did the same 12/20 and RDN thanks for the PM

[kreon]

13/20...like the brain sex test too......

[Neeranam]

Only 10/20 for me.

I could have done better guessing!

[Abandon]

13/20 for me. Interesting though that being hard of hearing I never look at peoples eyes, only at their mouths. In traditional body language interpretation people are supposed to find that you are friendly if you look below the eyes, business like if at the eye level, and dishonest if above the eyes (According to my hazy memory of the Alan Pease book).

[brubo1]

It's all in the eyes! 15 / 20 for me

[Patex]

15/20, too

Amazingly, females can't bluff me...

Regards, Patex

[SeaVisionBurma]

funny, but I would not have thought that the OP on women's intuition would have involved a survey about spotting fake smiles.

For my perception - women's intuition would be more in line with having some '6th sense' (okay not literally) which points women in the direction of something portrayed which is not quite right.

eg coming home and noticing the out-of-place hair in the hairbrush, or being able to sense that their partner has been doing something which he shouldn't have.

For me - I always understood women's intuition as being the ability to sniff out some lie or cover-up (generally from men, but also from fellow females) without a moment's hesitation.....

comments??

[Numtip]

Got 15/20 too

[cdnvic]

16 out of 20, and its definitly in the eyes.

cv

[Explorer]

12/20 here

Explorer

[bkkmadness]

18 out of 20 correct

Note I did get the Asian girl one wrong

Interesting point on noting the eyes, made me think how they got people to do fake and genuine smiles for the camera.

I think they got people in front of the cam, made a few jokes to them first whilst setting everything up before asking them to do the fake smiles, so a lot of the people with genuine smiles actually looked away from the cam towards the person making the joke and a lot of the people with fake smiles looked directly into the cam concentrating on nothing else.

That was quite easy to spot and in a real situation wouldn't have happened, so it makes me think the test was kinda floored a bit.

[aughie]

15 out of 20. I'm hard of hearing also so in conversations I watch the lips pronounce words. It helps a bit. For the test I looked at the eyes. It was difficult to decide on a couple because the smile looked sincere yet they were distracted and the mouth changed slightly. There were hesitations because of the distraction. what is that? becoming distracted counts or not towards genuine? I would say any sample distracted clouds the issue and should not be used in the exam.

edit: people who were distracted hesitated with their smiles and their eyes blinked. It could be construed as dishonest.

Edited April 16, 2005 by aughie

[Abandon]

That was quite easy to spot and in a real situation wouldn't have happened, so it makes me think the test was kinda floored a bit.

Bit like your spelling huh Bkk

In Psychology there is a lot of well performed research ... many folks think that it is all about analysis and 'my momma never hugged me' kind of interpretation. And most of it seems to show that we can't think straight. If anyone is interested I can put up some of the most interesting findings (not Thailand related though).

When doing the surveys, the psychologists are often looking for things that they do not warn you about - i.e. they misdirect your attention so that the real data is more 'pure'. For example - in this survey you are asked to look for fakeness of smile, but in real life you are not specifically looking for that information, and so your test results are not so relevant. In that survey for instance - they may really be looking to see if people find black/asian faces more untrustworthy. There was such a survey where a few pictures were shown of people doing regular household chores - but where it was black people the interpretations leaned towards suspicion e.g. the black man is stealing from a drawer / the white woman is looking for something. The test was designed to show that people who do not consider themselves racicst actually do have prejudices that affect their judgement.

I suspect that the real thrust of the test was about the optimism/pessimism question at the start.

[bkkmadness]

That was quite easy to spot and in a real situation wouldn't have happened, so it makes me think the test was kinda floored a bit.

Bit like your spelling huh Bkk

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

eh? what did I spell wrong?

nuffin worng wiv me spellin is ther panda?

[RDN]

....Bit like your spelling huh  Bkk ...

.... people who do not consider themselves racicst ....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[PeaceBlondie]

Did they define intuition? Can we? What is intuition?

There could be a genetic or hormonal component that enters in. However, I expect it's mostly just learned behavior, if it's anything at all - that one of the complex, gender-specific skills that a female learns is to see below the surface, learn to discern voice tones or forced smiles, etc., in different life situations than where the man learns to discern certain things.

Aren't men better poker players?

[Abandon]

eh? what did I spell wrong?

nuffin worng wiv me spellin is ther panda? 

Floored - after a hard night on the booze

Flawed - inherant fault

But please don't look through my posts for spelling errors - as RDN pointed out

Actually the original article too was horribly limited and made no real test of women's intuition. In fact the whole w i thing seems to have been added just as a headline grabber. Good fun though.

[Thetyim]

I think the test is flawed.

It has assumed that intuition is totally visual.

[PeaceBlondie]

pandit, you can't have it both ways.

flawed - INHERENT fault.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Abandon]

pandit, you can't have it both ways.

flawed - INHERENT fault.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm glad there isn't a red faced embarrassment smilie icon, or I would be post it here.

Dam - is it smiley or smilie or smily - think I had better quit while I am behind.

[bkkmadness]

eh? what did I spell wrong?

nuffin worng wiv me spellin is ther panda? 

Floored - after a hard night on the booze

Flawed - inherant fault

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ah, ok, got you now. And the worse thing is I checked over my post a few times and still couldn't find it! Cheers man, I've only been awake 30 mins and already educated myself further.

Edited April 17, 2005 by bkkmadness

[Boo]

I think SBV has got it right, it's not a visual thing it's a feeling you get when something is not quite right or different. I can be in a crowded bar & know when a fight is about to kick off without seeing anything to indicate it (could be on the other side of the room or loads of people in the way) I just feel a change in atmosphere (electricity?) or when I come into someones house & know before they speak that they have had a big argument or something is wrong. I also sometimes walk longer routes if I get a funny feeling as I trust my own senses & would rather take longer getting somewhere then risk not listening to my intuition & get into a situation I don't want to be in.

I don't think this is a particually female thing but maybe women are more likely to listen to their internal self than men?

At work we call it emotioanl intelligence & the company I work for rate it just as highly as academic inteligence & during recruitment staff are given a series of emotianal tests to find out about their instincts & how well suited they are to certain roles.

[tutsiwarrior]

I agree with Boo and SBV...this smile business ain't got nothin' to do with wimmins' intuition...

the wife's got intuition all over the place...

[Neeranam]

I think I'd better try again as 10/20 is the lowest score here.

I am confident I could get full marks second time

[bkkmadness]

I think I'd better try again as 10/20 is the lowest score here.

I am confident I could get full marks second time

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

why, did you write down the answers this time Neer?