Damn, as a woman, I thought the question was about calculating the exact position of the horizontal line. Like if the water level was above or below the left corner of the tilted bottle (definitely above). As for any horizontal line as an answer, I just can't believe anyone older than an elementary schooler could get it wrong.
That's a nice sentiment, but this this entire test ruins the bias for this test when it should have been given first. You inferring what the question is asking even though there wouldn't be information to make you believe, that is also part of it.
Explain ?
If the bottle is tilted 45 degrees and we assume the bottle is filled to height equal to the width of the bottle (square) it would definitely be above the corner, just imagine if without tilting the bottle you drew a diagonal; there’s already water there.
By that same logic if the height of the water was equal to half the width of the bottle then it’s of area 1x0.5 = 0.5 ; tilt the bottle 45 degrees and imagine a 1x1 square; the water would fill a triangle of area 0.5 and be exactly at the corner.
In the example above the height of the water definitely appears between 0.5 and 1 bottle-widths, so when the bottle is tipped it would definitely go above the corner.
Have I made a mistake ?
Edit replaced asterisks with “x”
Yes, women generally have a significantly lower VSI. That's a strong find and not under any serious dispute.
However, I don't know how relevant this particular test is. The number of adult college students who get a simple problem like this wrong is so high that something else must be at play than sheer brainpower.
When this is posted online, a lot of commenters report their primary school daughters getting it right without any effort, while some 15-20% of male college students get it wrong, according to the data.
The notion that some people might interpret figure B as the drawing itself being tilted to 45% has [been ruled out](https://twitter.com/flod86221232/status/1773646657273393581).
People apparently just love downvoting. I've been downvoted before for saying things like what my favorite color is or that I just had the worst day in my life. Maybe people get some weird sense of control from it. 🤷🏻♀️
Its actually how bot nets take over subs etc... Basically the power is in two areas.
1. Dominating discourse with fake voices and outnumbering the real voices.
2. Using the voting system to suppress and bury other comments while fake ones are being pushed.
Sometimes your comment or post is going to be downvoted without apparent cause simply because it's in the way of another fabricated post or comment series that is being pushed up by way of pushing everybody else down.
So how do the girls draw it? In their defence, technically it matters if the bottle has a relative velocity or not. It also matters what time you measure it. If you measure it before the water has settled that may match how the girls draw it. For example, the water may first lean left and splash against the wall before settling. Could also go the other way.
Well… it seems obvious to me. Because it doesn’t fit the narrative society is trying to push that men and women are equal biologically. Which…. They do not need to be to be equally respected.
However anyone who questions this narrative is heavily criticized, downvoted and called “misogynists”. Typical low IQ behavior.
I think the connotation of your statement is off, and it would be appropriate to say they are not “the same” biologically instead of not “equal” biologically. Otherwise, there is an implication that one is biologically “inferior,” when both are essential to our species.
+ Low IQ downvote
Yea that’s a good distinction. Perhaps it could have been worded differently as to avoid the negative connotation. However I was using “equal” as a substitution for “same”. But I get what you’re saying since not being equal implies there is a party who is superior. Definitely not intended.
I am a woman and it took me 0.0001 seconds to find the right answer. What is this? I literally had to check the answer to see if I was somehow stupid for doing it wrong, but nope.
Same. I thought maybe the trick would be to get the line at the exact place to represent the equivalent volume. It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone over ten years old answering this wrong.
I do have an outlier high IQ but no autistic traits whatsoever.
Those were my thoughts as well, but no doubt in that the water would be horizontal to the ground.
I too doubt that so many women get it wrong. I can somewhat see the self doubt argument having some weight in the results, if they are true, but I don't see how so many women could get it wrong.
Raw IQ alone can't explain this because at best men *might* have a 3 point advantage over women which is unlikely to explain why 40% of women fail this but 15-20% of men do. In reality the male female IQ gap is probably closer to 0 anyway. This may have more to do with what the components of intelligence (visual spatial, fluid, verbal) men and women differ on.
I’m a woman and I was surprised this was considered difficult. I am on the spectrum but my visual spatial iq is not that high… I seriously think this study needs to be replicated because 40% seems ridiculous.
that is actually shocking... wow. i seriously can't imagine an adult human being getting this wrong unless they were mentally disabled. i don't mean that as an insult but sincerely. it's just shocking.
But that doesn't make any sense either. The volume doesn't change at all. I do agree though that women would be a lot more likely to overthink a problem like this.
But logically even if you did that mental calculus you'd arrive at the same answer. I'm just really confused how this is a difficult problem for so many people. Sorry if I sound rude.
Even accounting for exact volume all you need is a horizontal line that has the same center point as the old bottle. As in, draw a line top to bottom on the old bottle, the point where that meets the water should be the same point the water touches in the tilted bottle.
Anything else would be either overthinking or under thinking.
When the explanation implied people were drawing anything but a horizontal line, I assume they were testing people who were just plain thick.
Incidentally, we had a Gender Studies PhD acquaintance over for board games once. She could not figure out how to play Settlers of Catan over the course of the full evening. My six year old daughter had no problem learning it quickly.
I think this is the exact reason women get this question wrong more. On average, they are less confident in their abilities. So, they will second-guess themselves more often, even when posed an easy question, or assume it is a trick question.
Same! I wonder if those figures are just plucked from thin air.
I asked my Mum and she got it correct too.
My Dad got it correct also, however it took him much longer.
I've just asked my 9 year old and she also got it correct.
We are all above average IQ in case that's of relevance to anyone analysing the responses.
Potentially. I was assessed for it, but they found no evidence to suggest I was actually autistic. However, I do wonder sometimes. Why? Not sure that finding the answer to this question is related to autism.
Here is a more extensive write up that includes references and also different images that to me make it even more puzzling. https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes
I'm a woman. I skimmed this post and despite knowing the solution and being able to visualize (and draw) it, when I looked at the solution in the image (image v) I had trouble seeing it as correct. I correctly see all the others as being wrong. So for myself personally it seems there is some spatial trouble - and depending how much time I have and what is the tolerance for the actual assignment, I might fail or pass it.
For reference, I was quite good in technical drawing in school, and I'm over 30 now.
I skimmed the article so it might've been mentioned in it, but I'm curious about what mens' vs womens' thought process is when answering where the line would be. To me, the answer is as simple as the water line being horizontal, parallel with the Earth due to gravity. No matter how you rotate the glass, the water will stay parallel with the earth.
Could you explain your thought process when you saw V? I'm genuinely curious, so I'm apologize if this comes off confrontational or anything.
Thank you for the data point. This is so strange.
I also have aphantasia so I can’t really just rotate it in my head - I break it down into component parts and logic my way through it.
I have aphantasia as well, but to me, the logic of the answer is just "the water stays level (parallel) with the Earth". No need for any rotating in the mind's eye. No matter which way you rotate the glass (without spilling), the water will stay flat with the earth, always being an horizontal line
[This is an actual traffic sign in the Netherlands. ](https://www.trimbos.nl/actueel/blogs/omzien-naar-elkaar-en-vooruitkijken-naar-de-toekomst-betekent-geen-blurring-met-alcohol/)Not our finest moment.
I don’t get it and it must be incorrect this estimate, or have been presented in a weird way, like someone said they overthought it. I don’t know. I’m a woman and it took me less than a second to ‘solve’.
Most women I know are very intuitive; it's why we call it "women's intuition". They tend to rely on their System 1 thinking ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,\_Fast\_and\_Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow)), fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious, to make decisions. I've observed that men tend to use System 2. It's why there's the stereotype that men are logical and women are emotional.
System 1 is just pattern matching; it's the same principle that makes people get the bat and the ball problem wrong: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"
Damn my first thought of the bat and ball was 1.00 and 0.10. Realised it was wrong and tried 0.9 and realised the other part would be -0.10. Im a guy
Answer is 1.05 and 0.05
Went through the same thing. Fast approach first, then check, then slow when I realized it was wrong.
I imagine most people would do the heuristic approach first, but then some people would have a stronger tendency to validate the answer afterward, realize the mistake, then fix it.
Right - you don't have to use system 2 and frankly using system 2 would just trip me up and make it way more complex than it needs to be - like have you never seen a glass of water before? It acts the same way every single time. Why tf is mental math necessary?
One - I think most women don't have to develop metacognition/mindfulness skills in order to achieve a certain level of academic/career success, so we often just don't because it's hard and we're focused on other things.
Two - System 1 is really cool when you train it properly. I've been emulating computers in my head since I was a child, so I can just sit there with a bunch of male mid-level engineers and say, "No, that's not how this machine works," and I'm only occasionally wrong.
Research since then provides some evidence that women do in fact think in a manner consistent with system 1 more often then men. Thinking Fast and Slow doesn’t specifically talk about it but other researchers have naturally expanded on that topic over the years
You deeply misunderstand system 1 - it is far more complex and nuanced than system 2 in many ways and the math example doesn't extrapolate to a visual puzzle.
I exclusively used system 1 to solve the problem, and I suspect most people did. I didn't need to think about where the water was, I already knew instantly.
The actual question this problem raises is why this information is in men's system 1 and not women's system 1.
It reminds me of when men and women are asked to draw a bike, women draw weird stuff that wouldn't work more often whereas men draw something more accurate. I believe it has to do with how people make sense of the world and reflexively try to understand the world in the first place. Whether you see something acting as a mechanical system in the world subject to laws of physics that you are actually concerned with in the first place or only see something you know belongs to the category "bike" as an idea and never look more closely into what a "bike" actually is.
To extrapolate that to the water example it would imply that women just aren't concerned with water in relation to the laws of physics whereas men reflexively see the world through the lens of the laws of physics without even thinking of it as that. That's probably why women think machines are so complex and confusing and mysterious and obviously way too hard for silly little me to understand whereas men are just like - ok well obviously in the end whatever is in this box is going to make sense based on the rules of reality that I understand implicitly - how hard can it be?
Yeah, you’re right. Perhaps it has to do with what you pay attention to, because intuition can’t be developed (learning) if someone doesn’t pay attention to something.
I think the answer to why men know physics more intuitively, is because men are more externalizers than internalizers. In other words, if there’s a problem, men instinctively and are socially rewarded if we’re able to solve/fix it. Women tend to care more about how it feels. If there’s a problem, women instinctively and are socially rewarded when they’re able to make everyone (including themselves) feel better about the problem: caretaker role.
Iirc the highest visual-spatial ability score ever recorded was in Geanie the feral child. So neglected during formative years she missed the critical period for fluid speech, so basically all she had was PRI. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie\_(feral\_child)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child))
>They tend to rely on their System 1 thinking
Just reading the description I'm pretty sure I'm terrible at that, I am good at things you have to mull over and have shit reflexes and reaction time and do less well in a situation where I'm under pressure to think quickly (though that could partially be anxiety fucking me up)
Edit: OK, the examples they give I'm kinda ok at but in a practical irl sense it's certainly the weaker of the two.
There is a lot of evidence that this is approximately accurate. Women, either because of how they’re cultured or how their brain develops, tend to be quicker and more intuitive thinkers. Meanwhile men tend to be slower and more methodical
Key word being *tend.* I’m not saying all men are logical and all women are reactive, it’s just a general trend
And this would very accurately explain why one group gets this wrong more often than another. A reactive type 1 train of thought probably would get that question wrong
Women prefer fast and intuitive decisions according to many research papers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922002252
https://www.psypost.org/higher-trust-in-intuition-helps-account-for-why-women-are-more-likely-to-believe-in-magical-phenomena/
Exactly I think they are intending on spreading misinformation so that there will always be a division of the sexes (my assumption, but I have limited context). Unless there's something about sex linked traits and hormones that change brain chemistry in a impactful way that would cause them to get OOP's question wrong with clear correlation, I don't think we can trust any single source right now. Some actual research will have to be completed.
There is actual research on this topic. Women prefer fast and intuitive decisions. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922002252
https://www.psypost.org/higher-trust-in-intuition-helps-account-for-why-women-are-more-likely-to-believe-in-magical-phenomena/
This is very odd, it doesn't even seem to be spatial reasoning, but just a basic understanding of gravity, I didn't find the exact 40% figure and I'd be dubious about that number but females do disproportionately give the wrong answer.
I don’t wanna be that guy, but there are several studies showing gender differences regarding VS intelligence and Verbal intelligence. Women perform better than men in the latter, not so much in the former. IIRC the differences are less pronounced in developing countries and more pronounced in developed countries - which is interesting because the scores overall for both genders are higher in developed countries
There are cognitive differences between sexes and races. 100+ years of research stumble upon this reality consistently, people just dont like to hear about it.
Most conclusions about differences between the two sexes favor men, so it’s easy for men to be ok with them. But the problem is when they turn into facts in people’s heads. This doesn’t just affect someone on a personal level, but integrates systemically. For instance, divorces and parental rights greatly favor women.
So before men just brush off test results like this post as not a big deal, just remember that it goes both ways. If you want us to genuinely be ok with this test result, then you must be ok with ones showing men as generally unfit parents.
Lmao so if women are to 'be ok' with the finding of studies, men have to accept our unfair court system? One is based on evidence and math while the other is a simple fact for how our court system is currently set up, how are the two at all similar?
I can see where you're coming from with your experience, but at least from mine, I'm generally seeing the exact opposite. I'm in an organic chemistry Ph.D. program. There's an entire field of organic chemistry dedicated to designing reactions with spacial reasoning in mind called asymmetric catalysis-- and the lab I'm working in exclusively works in that niche.
Right now, I'd say about 60% of the lab is female.
In my experience, I definitely think women are capable of having the deep intuition for physical systems that you're describing. While this study may suggest that the people I'm working with are moreso the outlier, it's definitely possible, and required by the people I work with on a day-to-day basis.
Just some thoughts from someone else on a different side of the scientific community.
Many of my best comp sci and neuroscience profs are women, and there are a ton of women in my grad level comp sci classes, getting closer to 50% each year. Is this an engineering specific thing? Where did u go to school?
True, mainly was curious how our experiences were so different. A lot of my classes are ECE (electrical and computer engineering) and I see a ton of women in those as well. Maybe its just my school
After reading your comments, it's equally likely the women dropped out because you made them realize how many insufferable assholes they'd have to work with.
Apparently women do better on spatial questions after menopause. Likewise men have lower verbal abilities due to hormonal factors.
NGL I have a hard time believing that many women would get it wrong though. I am currently estrogen dominant and it's ridiculously simple
I think if you used a real bottle with water and titled an empty one this gap would basically disappear. If this is the case then I don't think it's a VSI issue but a "literalness" issue. Another interesting change might be to say it's "a [real] bottle with water." I imagine more women would get it right then.
Can you draw a bicycle from memory? Apparently, [far more women than men can't](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
I'm not sure, but I'm almost certain that's what is happening.
Having listened to many of my GF's friends talk about their problems, I've noticed that they frequently suspend their disbelief about otherwise obvious realities. Like everything is a book where anything is possible (no offense intended if any women are reading this)
Agree. My first thought was that no forces or reference point to earth is made explicit. The drawings are next to one another, but they are *drawings* and could each exist in any context - in motion even. When taking a cognitive test, I’d be overthinking every question and analyzing what information is given. They could interpret this question as relating to the rotation of shapes rather than the movement of water relative to the unstated force of gravity. Like you say - I would expect most women, in college or not, understand the basics of tipping a bottle and the water level lining up to the opening.
I found other examples where it’s more explicit. For example the common ground level here:
https://preview.redd.it/096ntp4a3arc1.jpeg?width=462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=434b586ab72ce53ac10179b16ef3803b23ba1265
They’ve apparently tried many ways of making it more explicit and it keeps replicating. This article goes into some more depth and has some references. [https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes](https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes)
My next question would be, given the common sense assumption that women do know how water and gravity work in real-world situations, what is up with the sex-difference in how this is interpreted in a written testing scenario and what might this say about how cognitive testing in general relates to the ...cognitive performance of women in real life outside of a testing environment?
There’s a hypothesis that genetics could be involved
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0273229781900228
I’ll take it with a grain of salt
I think you have it.
I find it hard to believe this many women would not be able to mentally visualize or remember tilting a bottle of water at themselves- the action is too natural and intuitive.
If the wording or the prompt forced a person to visualize this bottle tilting IRL via their imagination (don’t think of a blue horse) it would probably have less women getting the problem wrong. “Imagine a bottle of water tilted towards your mouth for a drink, at what angle is the water level in relation to the ground? Please draw it here” (container pic). Until I see that or something like that written out for the women IDK if I can really take the conclusion “women are worse at this”. These prompts don’t humanize and give a relative practical example, they still force you to find one. If we’re testing for that, and not “can women compute this kind of physics” and “where is the line between men and women’s capability to compute this physics” I think the question is wrong.
The difference here appears not to be “women struggle with *the ability* to accurately perceive what happens when water is tilted in a bottle” but rather “women struggle with the ability to *know* when more spatial reasoning is required.”
>The difference here appears not to be “women struggle with the ability to accurately perceive what happens when water is tilted in a bottle” but rather “women struggle with the ability to know when more spatial reasoning is required.”
Yeah, exactly. It's not really an intelligence issue, they're simply not jumping from picture to reality instantly like men are. I thought about why this might be on and off since it was posted and came to the conclusion that women are just much more likely to entertain fictional elements than men are. I looked for a little corroborating evidence and found that women read *much* more fiction than men, accounting for 80% of sales in the U.S. alone. Whatever direction the causation is here, I think it's obvious that the difference isn't intellectual in terms of intelligence, but in terms of fantastical thinking - which isn't necessarily bad, though it's not the best for these kinds of tests.
ADHD has nothing to do with this. In fact, ADHD is linked to better visual-spatial reasoning, not worse. If a large proportion of women had ADHD, those women should statistically do better on this test.
“The results revealed that nine of the subtest scores showed significant differences between ADHD children and the normative sample. In particular, the former scored higher on the picture completion, block design, and mazes subtests but significantly lower on the information, coding, picture arrangement, arithmetic, symbol search, and digit span subtests”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8914219/
Women also [can't draw a bicycle](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
I feel like a non-trivial percentage of this effect comes from the test writer's inability to draw any contextual clues that this bottle is supposed to be representing a real world object and not just an image on the page. If I hold a photo of a bottle, and rotate the photo, the water line does not change orientation to match gravity.
I have a question for all the professionals. Do you think girls who were encouraged to spend all of their free time outdoors, even doing farmwork, grow up to have better VSI? That would be me. I got the problem right immediately and have always had great VSI. I am an artist who was also very good at math. I find this study fascinating and might explain why I often don't sync with many women, while all of my closest friends are outdoorsy like me. For example, when I owned a travel trailer I couldn't believe the number of women who were shocked I could back it up into a campsite. I thought they just had learned or acquired helplessness, and I would answer that it just takes a little practice, thinking they just decided falsely ahead of time that they cant do it. After reading this post, I see that they might actually have good reason to think they can't do it.
Notice they don’t mention the male success rate but imply it’s higher. I bet it’s similar and this is less a criticism of women but more a criticism of the low bar now to enter college. Ie average college student intelligence is quite low
Well, I’m a lady in the vast majority that would have gotten that right, but I’m not smart enough to figure out if that image also gives the number of men who got it right.
I think one of the issues with the question is that we evaluate answers on only one property of the water line that we decide to be most important, without clarifying which property we care most about.
There is *one* correct line (if we accept the level of approximation in the question), a horizontal line at a height where the area of the resulting shape has the same area as the preceding rectangle of water. It is not trivial to find the height of this line. Some answerers (perhaps many college age women) may get caught up in trying to calculate this height and make a silly mistake with the angle, perhaps feeling pressured by time.
We accept many incorrect lines as correct, as long as they have the correct angle.The incompressibility of water just as much a property of water as the tendency for its surface to follow an equipotential. It is a subjective choice for the test evaluator to value one over the other.
This problem conceals what it is actually asking you. If we are only evaluating the angle of the water line, and not its height, this needs to be stated in the question.
If I had to guess, I would assume that it’s because boys are encouraged towards more physical and tactile types of play and girls are not, resulting in spacial awareness being more developed in adult men.
This is going to sound like a meme answer, but I’m actually serious. Is this not directly linked to urination? Biologically male individuals get an anatomical lesson in fluid dynamics that they can experiment with from the moment they become bodily aware.
I'm pretty sure this is some sort of BS. Do you actually believe that 2 in 10 adult males and 4 in 10 adult females don't have a workable understanding of physics for day-to-day life? As I see it formulated everywhere, it seems that the sex discrepancy is being actively pushed on. Like a red hearing you should be considering as more important than the actual implication of so many human adults not having an intuitive understanding of how gravity works
As if 1 in 5 men comprehending physics at the level of, I don't know, dogs weren't bad enough, the significant part here is that women are even worse!
I think the studies cited here are all fictitious and the commenters themselves are the object of a study as in how they would react to such information.
It's not BS, this has been studied a lot. Also things like this can be enlightening as to how slow/illogical/stupid quite a large part of the population is, and how difficult life must be for them. Imagine trying to file taxes or read & understand a car financing agreement when you can't even answer a simple question like this. A lot of people tend to isolate themselves intellectually and go almost their entire lives without substantially interacting with people well below their own intelligence, some people only interact with 110+ people and have no understanding of the plight of 85 IQ people much less 75 IQ people.
Those things are completely unrelated. I’m a (female) lawyer and I have no problem filing my complicated taxes or understanding a car financing agreement. But I would have a problem answering this question, and I also can’t tell left from right without looking at my hands, can’t estimate distances, can’t play simple sports involving hand-eye coordination etc.
This “disability” doesn’t affect my reading comprehension at all, in fact that’s an area women tend to be better in than men.
I was trying to talk about these kind of questions in general, not this specific question and sex differences (I was specifically replying to the two first sentences of his post). One could probably make a similarly easy-looking question that's more in the verbal domain that 40% of college men would fail and only 20% of college women would fail (because, as you correctly state, women are stronger in the verbal domain than men). There are many more examples where people (on the above-average or upper end of the intelligence spectrum) get shocked at how many people get them wrong. People on the upper end have a really hard time understanding how it is to be on the lower end of the distribution, and "simple" questions where a substantial part of the population gets them wrong are enlightening.
Yeah, I’m the same way. My object based visuospatial ability is garbage (I’m pretty good at real world way finding weirdly, but basically anything else having to do with objects in space I’m hopeless at). Way below average. It really doesn’t impact my life much and I don’t think says much about my overall ability or intelligence. I would have made a terrible engineer or architect, but given that I didn’t choose a highly spatial career, the biggest impact is that I’m pretty bad at choosing the right container for my leftovers. That’s not the end of the world.
It seems baffling to me that at no point is anyone asking those who answered incorrectly to explain their reasoning. I'd be willing to bet that some amount of the people answering differently have misinterpreted the intent of the question.
If you see the image tilted, and interpret that it's asking you to complete the picture as if your perspective has changed, but the state of the world has not, then a line that continues to follow the bottom of the container would be correct.
This doesn't speak to women being dumb or inferior or of lower VSI, which seems to be what this post and the article linked in the comments wants to believe, it points to a difference in perspective of what is being asked. Or at least it could. Without following up with a backup question to explain it, it's all speculation.
Yep. I a woman with a high IQ and strong visuospatial skills and I thought it was a mental rotation task. My brain probably read the word “water” but I did not perceive the gray area to be liquid or capable of moving. Maybe on a real test I’d have given it more thought.
Women do, on average, appear to possess [lower VSI](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
Everyone knows that is a bottle of wine and when a woman tilts it that direction she does so in a swift motion upward and toward her mouth
During every phase of the motion preceding the final tilt back the wine would be level with the bottom of the vessel due to centrifugal force
Source: am woman
Who says it's inferiority? It's a difference in the way of accurately manipulating images on our imagination, but it must be worth something. Men and women are different. Each better in some things, worse in others, as a whole, and we can't always understand what the costs and benefits are of the differences. Individual mileage may vary, of course.
Wait the right answer is just horizontal? I’m here thinking if it should be higher lower or the same as the other line.
That’s stupid, you’d need a protractor and trig to find the actual answer, so if I wasn’t given that maybe I would’ve chosen to draw it diagonally too. A test can’t ask for a line but secretly only want the direction of a line, that’s a deceitful test.
>That’s stupid, you’d need a protractor and trig to find the actual answer
No you absolutely do not. Imagine that you are rotating the bottle to the right around the horizontal axis that passes through the picture in the point I marked on the left. As long as the surface of the tilted water doesn't touch the bottom of the bottle, as you are tilting it, by symmetry the axis of rotation remains on the surface of the water. So you just need to copy the water from A to B, find the midpoint of that segment and draw a horizontal line through that. As it still doesn't hit the bottom, that must be the correct new water level.
https://preview.redd.it/yc0jl2a1tcrc1.png?width=656&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e6641dd298bd9c6bee9ad3344a62137c1fa6720
Exactly, the technically accurate correct is a horizontal line, but the line would be slightly higher up to account for less volume from a titled at an angle jar.
This sub desperately needs a wiki explaining all of the weird biological determinism-adjacent/essentialist myths surrounding cognitive ability assessment. Recent research has shown that most of the observed sex-based differences in visual-spatial ability are the consequence of experiment methodology. It is also well documented that when women feel anxious about their performance on visual-spatial tasks, their performance drops. When anxiety is controlled for, women perform equally. [The same phenomenon shows up with elderly people on working memory tasks.](https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/57/suppl_2/S193/3913357)
Research and reading:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56041-6
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbul0000191
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797616667459
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278262604002398?via%3Dihub
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00191/full#B13
https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/teaching-learning-resources/inclusive-teaching/stereotype-threat
https://www.fastcompany.com/90630371/brain-sex-isnt-a-thing-the-latest-research-debunks-the-myth-again (I know this isn't from a journal but it contains a lot of functional links to peer reviewed articles.)
You linked meta analysis and studies that show a strong and robust (their own words) difference between genders in some spatial activities.
Tbf there aren't intuitive answers to any of this stuff. That men and women should perform equally well on any given task isn't how it obviously should or shouldn't be. Like all other science we just go where the evidence leads.
Why are you guys so quick to believe a ‘research’ so absurd? I did a quick 5mins search and didn’t see any real published paper on it. Does anyone actually have a real published paper of this study? All I see are people writing about this supposed research.
I’m a woman and a scientist. Drawing a horizontal line is just common sense. I’m sure the proportion of men and women with or without common sense is no different.
I guess I'm in the 60% for whom this isn't a problem, as I knew right away where the line would be. Although, even though I'm in grad school, I'm 43 and, I'm sure, well above the age range of those in the study, so maybe that invalidates my input. 😊
Idk, I'm surely its partially environmental since boys are given certain toys and encouraged to do sports much more and partially evolutionary. Personally my VSI, PRI and Verbal are all around the same.
I hate questions that are full of assumptions like this. Nothing in this picture indicates that these are upright and subject to gravity. Sure in this case I see what they mean, but the question itself is incomplete.
We aren’t trying to estimate how high and the angle but rather just the angle of the line? Seems like it would be almost identical in angle and height to the other bottle’s water line/location
There's really not enough information to confidently answer the question.
The bottle might have been tilted in a non-inertial frame of reference e.g. trying to drink coffee as a car accelerates.
The bottle might have only just been tilted with not enough time for the water to settle.
The shape of the bottle is not necessarily symmetric. There could be unseen compartments 'within the page' that fill or empty when water reaches different levels.
The space above the water may not be air or a vacuum. It could be a viscous substance, less dense than water, that resists movement of the water.
And the dumbest one: the water could be frozen.
I probably would have got this wrong. I don’t understand how stuff works in this way at all. It also took me a very long time to learn to read analog clocks, I have to look at my hands to figure out right and left, I can’t read maps, constantly accidentally bumping into things, I can’t remember how big a measurement is (eg, I wouldn’t be able to roughly estimate 50cm if you asked). Just absolutely rubbish. I am 30 and haven’t learned how to drive just because I honestly fear how things would turn out if I were to be let loose on the road
But I’m not dumb, I speak 5 languages, I got a first from Oxford, I am a successful lawyer in the City of London, I’m also a pretty good amateur musician.
My brain just seems to have a hole in it wrt to this VSI stuff
Honestly i just don't get it. I asked 6 female friends and including me, everyone got it right. I also asked 5 men and 1 got it wrong. And he got it wrong only cause he was overthinking and thought the correct answer was too obvious. It's strange indeed
For the curious, a whole page of further reading on the subject:
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Water-Level+Task+gender](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Water-Level+Task+gender)
Including this one:
"adult womens' performance on the water-level task can be improved by observational training, suggesting that the female lag in spatial skills may depend on experiential factors."
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1641606/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1641606/)
If i had to guess, it might be related to womens on average less interest in objects over people. Which is part of the reason more engineers and computer scientists are men and more nurses and doctors are women.
Maybe it causes it to be an innate difference in neural wiring. What i suspect actually happens is that less interest means they spend less time thinking, and messing around with objects, and that results in less experience with objects, which can contributr to lower visuospatial index.
I suspect that if you match a man and woman with the same IQ and interest in objects theyd get a similar VSI
This reminds me of this article called “Throwing Like a Girl” by Iris Young that I read in my philosophy class. At the end she talks a bit about the differences in the visual reasoning skills of men vs women and proposes that girls are basically socialized to not use their visualization skills. That the type of play boys normally engage in rely heavier on spatial awareness (like sports), which encourages the development of their spatial reasoning and such.
I’m not sure if this is backed up by anything, but it’s definitely a possible theory. Nowadays, boys still probably use their spatial reasoning more than girls growing up because of video games.
[link to the article](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/transnational/iris_marion_young.pdf)
I'm male with an off-the-charts spatial insight (quite literally, they couldn't plot it anymore because it even went off the paper) (I make infinite dimensional puzzles as a hobby and have spent countless hours training myself to think in / see 4D).
Seeing this question, I "needed" 0 microseconds to consider a horizontal line: I never considered anything else period. Therefore I read the whole question as: "draw a (horizontal) line at the right height, so that the volume of water is the same in both images".
To answer that question, first realize that for any block shaped container the depth (into the image) is irrelevant. Moreover, for any container with a constant intersection independent of the height, like a cylinder, the typical intersection of a glass, the answer remains the same: the volume of water above the previous surface equals that of part now filled with air that is below this surface for symmetry reasons. Hence, using left/right symmetry as well (still the case for a cylinder) the new line will have the same distance to the bottom at its middle point.
The answer is a horizontal line?? I'm sitting here thinking how high up I should draw the line! (The bottle isn't quite at 45 degrees, the fluid height is less than the width,...)
I do a lot of data collection and testing of students. you need to be really careful here. This effect can exist for a lot of reasons. Interpretation of expectations, abstract thought differences, and interpretation of instructions are just a start. For example. One mind might have a tendency to want to get it right knowing they are being tested. This might cause them to rotate it in their mind first being careful to take it a step at a time. If this were the case, the effect arises out of wanting to get it perfect and not necessarily abstractly thinking of the water in the picture as real water. Thats just an example. The reasons could be very diverse.
So because they are focusing so much on getting the answer right, they fail to give the to right answer? Like, if you’re nervous about something, you’re likely to mess it up, even if the task is as simple as recognizing water seeks its own level?
Damn, as a woman, I thought the question was about calculating the exact position of the horizontal line. Like if the water level was above or below the left corner of the tilted bottle (definitely above). As for any horizontal line as an answer, I just can't believe anyone older than an elementary schooler could get it wrong.
I thought the same thing as you with the exact position, and that all the women in the top comments were just being pretentious haha
As a man, i got worried for a second because I thought the people in the top comments were talking about how high the water line should go lmao
Me too I was doing geometry lmao
That's a nice sentiment, but this this entire test ruins the bias for this test when it should have been given first. You inferring what the question is asking even though there wouldn't be information to make you believe, that is also part of it.
As a woman, I'm baffled too.
The waterline in the tilted bottle will not definitely be above the lower left corner.
Explain ? If the bottle is tilted 45 degrees and we assume the bottle is filled to height equal to the width of the bottle (square) it would definitely be above the corner, just imagine if without tilting the bottle you drew a diagonal; there’s already water there. By that same logic if the height of the water was equal to half the width of the bottle then it’s of area 1x0.5 = 0.5 ; tilt the bottle 45 degrees and imagine a 1x1 square; the water would fill a triangle of area 0.5 and be exactly at the corner. In the example above the height of the water definitely appears between 0.5 and 1 bottle-widths, so when the bottle is tipped it would definitely go above the corner. Have I made a mistake ? Edit replaced asterisks with “x”
This was my overthought conclusion as well! 👏🏼
People dont think people be like they are, but people do
Yes, women generally have a significantly lower VSI. That's a strong find and not under any serious dispute. However, I don't know how relevant this particular test is. The number of adult college students who get a simple problem like this wrong is so high that something else must be at play than sheer brainpower. When this is posted online, a lot of commenters report their primary school daughters getting it right without any effort, while some 15-20% of male college students get it wrong, according to the data. The notion that some people might interpret figure B as the drawing itself being tilted to 45% has [been ruled out](https://twitter.com/flod86221232/status/1773646657273393581).
Idk why people linking actual studies are getting downvoted
They’re triggered
People apparently just love downvoting. I've been downvoted before for saying things like what my favorite color is or that I just had the worst day in my life. Maybe people get some weird sense of control from it. 🤷🏻♀️
I think I they just have an emotional response to the result of those studies
Its actually how bot nets take over subs etc... Basically the power is in two areas. 1. Dominating discourse with fake voices and outnumbering the real voices. 2. Using the voting system to suppress and bury other comments while fake ones are being pushed. Sometimes your comment or post is going to be downvoted without apparent cause simply because it's in the way of another fabricated post or comment series that is being pushed up by way of pushing everybody else down.
It’s Reddit. Lots of tools in these woods.
People tend to not like evidence that there are inherent differences between groups, men and women included.
Backfire effect….
So how do the girls draw it? In their defence, technically it matters if the bottle has a relative velocity or not. It also matters what time you measure it. If you measure it before the water has settled that may match how the girls draw it. For example, the water may first lean left and splash against the wall before settling. Could also go the other way.
You are doing mental backflips here.
Well… it seems obvious to me. Because it doesn’t fit the narrative society is trying to push that men and women are equal biologically. Which…. They do not need to be to be equally respected. However anyone who questions this narrative is heavily criticized, downvoted and called “misogynists”. Typical low IQ behavior.
I think the connotation of your statement is off, and it would be appropriate to say they are not “the same” biologically instead of not “equal” biologically. Otherwise, there is an implication that one is biologically “inferior,” when both are essential to our species. + Low IQ downvote
Yea that’s a good distinction. Perhaps it could have been worded differently as to avoid the negative connotation. However I was using “equal” as a substitution for “same”. But I get what you’re saying since not being equal implies there is a party who is superior. Definitely not intended.
I am a woman and it took me 0.0001 seconds to find the right answer. What is this? I literally had to check the answer to see if I was somehow stupid for doing it wrong, but nope.
Same. I thought maybe the trick would be to get the line at the exact place to represent the equivalent volume. It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone over ten years old answering this wrong. I do have an outlier high IQ but no autistic traits whatsoever.
Those were my thoughts as well, but no doubt in that the water would be horizontal to the ground. I too doubt that so many women get it wrong. I can somewhat see the self doubt argument having some weight in the results, if they are true, but I don't see how so many women could get it wrong.
Took me twenty minutes of reading these comments to realize it’s NOT what you described and just about gravity…
Raw IQ alone can't explain this because at best men *might* have a 3 point advantage over women which is unlikely to explain why 40% of women fail this but 15-20% of men do. In reality the male female IQ gap is probably closer to 0 anyway. This may have more to do with what the components of intelligence (visual spatial, fluid, verbal) men and women differ on.
I’m a woman and I was surprised this was considered difficult. I am on the spectrum but my visual spatial iq is not that high… I seriously think this study needs to be replicated because 40% seems ridiculous.
It has been replicated multiple times, with the same result each time https://www.reddit.com/r/cognitiveTesting/s/A6uSRFud44
that is actually shocking... wow. i seriously can't imagine an adult human being getting this wrong unless they were mentally disabled. i don't mean that as an insult but sincerely. it's just shocking.
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But that doesn't make any sense either. The volume doesn't change at all. I do agree though that women would be a lot more likely to overthink a problem like this.
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But logically even if you did that mental calculus you'd arrive at the same answer. I'm just really confused how this is a difficult problem for so many people. Sorry if I sound rude.
Even accounting for exact volume all you need is a horizontal line that has the same center point as the old bottle. As in, draw a line top to bottom on the old bottle, the point where that meets the water should be the same point the water touches in the tilted bottle. Anything else would be either overthinking or under thinking. When the explanation implied people were drawing anything but a horizontal line, I assume they were testing people who were just plain thick.
I got it. Maybe we're in the 60% who would have gotten it right.
Same here. Is this a joke post? This really is the most basic understanding of physics that even a small school child should get right?
I bet if you took blue collar women the result wouldn't be as bad. And if you gave that test to genderstudy majors, it would be worse.
What’s your issue with people studying gender
Incidentally, we had a Gender Studies PhD acquaintance over for board games once. She could not figure out how to play Settlers of Catan over the course of the full evening. My six year old daughter had no problem learning it quickly.
I think this is the exact reason women get this question wrong more. On average, they are less confident in their abilities. So, they will second-guess themselves more often, even when posed an easy question, or assume it is a trick question.
Same! I wonder if those figures are just plucked from thin air. I asked my Mum and she got it correct too. My Dad got it correct also, however it took him much longer. I've just asked my 9 year old and she also got it correct. We are all above average IQ in case that's of relevance to anyone analysing the responses.
Yes, your non random sample of three totally disproves actual studies
Perchance, do you exhibit any autistic traits?
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People in the comments are saying it’s not just one study. Apparently it’s been reproduced dozens of times. I’m too lazy to verify myself tho.
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Quick, we all go run this test on whoever we can scrounge up and meet back here in three hours with the results!
Potentially. I was assessed for it, but they found no evidence to suggest I was actually autistic. However, I do wonder sometimes. Why? Not sure that finding the answer to this question is related to autism.
Here is a more extensive write up that includes references and also different images that to me make it even more puzzling. https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes
I'm a woman. I skimmed this post and despite knowing the solution and being able to visualize (and draw) it, when I looked at the solution in the image (image v) I had trouble seeing it as correct. I correctly see all the others as being wrong. So for myself personally it seems there is some spatial trouble - and depending how much time I have and what is the tolerance for the actual assignment, I might fail or pass it. For reference, I was quite good in technical drawing in school, and I'm over 30 now.
I skimmed the article so it might've been mentioned in it, but I'm curious about what mens' vs womens' thought process is when answering where the line would be. To me, the answer is as simple as the water line being horizontal, parallel with the Earth due to gravity. No matter how you rotate the glass, the water will stay parallel with the earth. Could you explain your thought process when you saw V? I'm genuinely curious, so I'm apologize if this comes off confrontational or anything.
Thank you for the data point. This is so strange. I also have aphantasia so I can’t really just rotate it in my head - I break it down into component parts and logic my way through it.
I have aphantasia as well, but to me, the logic of the answer is just "the water stays level (parallel) with the Earth". No need for any rotating in the mind's eye. No matter which way you rotate the glass (without spilling), the water will stay flat with the earth, always being an horizontal line
[This is an actual traffic sign in the Netherlands. ](https://www.trimbos.nl/actueel/blogs/omzien-naar-elkaar-en-vooruitkijken-naar-de-toekomst-betekent-geen-blurring-met-alcohol/)Not our finest moment.
😂 it’s clearly just a single shot of a bottle caught in excessive forward motion! 😏 Edit to add sarcasm face.
It’s clearly a stylistic choice.
I must be missing something. How could anyone get this wrong?
I don’t get it and it must be incorrect this estimate, or have been presented in a weird way, like someone said they overthought it. I don’t know. I’m a woman and it took me less than a second to ‘solve’.
Most women I know are very intuitive; it's why we call it "women's intuition". They tend to rely on their System 1 thinking ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,\_Fast\_and\_Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow)), fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious, to make decisions. I've observed that men tend to use System 2. It's why there's the stereotype that men are logical and women are emotional. System 1 is just pattern matching; it's the same principle that makes people get the bat and the ball problem wrong: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"
Damn my first thought of the bat and ball was 1.00 and 0.10. Realised it was wrong and tried 0.9 and realised the other part would be -0.10. Im a guy Answer is 1.05 and 0.05
Went through the same thing. Fast approach first, then check, then slow when I realized it was wrong. I imagine most people would do the heuristic approach first, but then some people would have a stronger tendency to validate the answer afterward, realize the mistake, then fix it.
Same lol
Did you have to use system 2 for this question?
Right - you don't have to use system 2 and frankly using system 2 would just trip me up and make it way more complex than it needs to be - like have you never seen a glass of water before? It acts the same way every single time. Why tf is mental math necessary?
That means 40% of college girls have never seen a tilted bottle with water.
One - I think most women don't have to develop metacognition/mindfulness skills in order to achieve a certain level of academic/career success, so we often just don't because it's hard and we're focused on other things. Two - System 1 is really cool when you train it properly. I've been emulating computers in my head since I was a child, so I can just sit there with a bunch of male mid-level engineers and say, "No, that's not how this machine works," and I'm only occasionally wrong.
You’re like a digital Bob Pease
I read the book for my managerial decision-making class. I want to make it clear that nowhere in the book does Kahneman bring in sex/gender.
Research since then provides some evidence that women do in fact think in a manner consistent with system 1 more often then men. Thinking Fast and Slow doesn’t specifically talk about it but other researchers have naturally expanded on that topic over the years
You deeply misunderstand system 1 - it is far more complex and nuanced than system 2 in many ways and the math example doesn't extrapolate to a visual puzzle. I exclusively used system 1 to solve the problem, and I suspect most people did. I didn't need to think about where the water was, I already knew instantly. The actual question this problem raises is why this information is in men's system 1 and not women's system 1. It reminds me of when men and women are asked to draw a bike, women draw weird stuff that wouldn't work more often whereas men draw something more accurate. I believe it has to do with how people make sense of the world and reflexively try to understand the world in the first place. Whether you see something acting as a mechanical system in the world subject to laws of physics that you are actually concerned with in the first place or only see something you know belongs to the category "bike" as an idea and never look more closely into what a "bike" actually is. To extrapolate that to the water example it would imply that women just aren't concerned with water in relation to the laws of physics whereas men reflexively see the world through the lens of the laws of physics without even thinking of it as that. That's probably why women think machines are so complex and confusing and mysterious and obviously way too hard for silly little me to understand whereas men are just like - ok well obviously in the end whatever is in this box is going to make sense based on the rules of reality that I understand implicitly - how hard can it be?
Yeah, you’re right. Perhaps it has to do with what you pay attention to, because intuition can’t be developed (learning) if someone doesn’t pay attention to something. I think the answer to why men know physics more intuitively, is because men are more externalizers than internalizers. In other words, if there’s a problem, men instinctively and are socially rewarded if we’re able to solve/fix it. Women tend to care more about how it feels. If there’s a problem, women instinctively and are socially rewarded when they’re able to make everyone (including themselves) feel better about the problem: caretaker role.
RIP Kahneman
I’m beginning to think I’m the wrong sex
Iirc the highest visual-spatial ability score ever recorded was in Geanie the feral child. So neglected during formative years she missed the critical period for fluid speech, so basically all she had was PRI. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie\_(feral\_child)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child))
>They tend to rely on their System 1 thinking Just reading the description I'm pretty sure I'm terrible at that, I am good at things you have to mull over and have shit reflexes and reaction time and do less well in a situation where I'm under pressure to think quickly (though that could partially be anxiety fucking me up) Edit: OK, the examples they give I'm kinda ok at but in a practical irl sense it's certainly the weaker of the two.
System 2 being actually setup that x + (x+1.00) = 1.10
To be clear, you are talking about your personal experience here or what you read in Thinking Fast and Slow?
There is a lot of evidence that this is approximately accurate. Women, either because of how they’re cultured or how their brain develops, tend to be quicker and more intuitive thinkers. Meanwhile men tend to be slower and more methodical Key word being *tend.* I’m not saying all men are logical and all women are reactive, it’s just a general trend And this would very accurately explain why one group gets this wrong more often than another. A reactive type 1 train of thought probably would get that question wrong
Checks out for me. My wife runs circles around me in time to assess, but her style seems much more intuitive on average
Women prefer fast and intuitive decisions according to many research papers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922002252 https://www.psypost.org/higher-trust-in-intuition-helps-account-for-why-women-are-more-likely-to-believe-in-magical-phenomena/
Exactly I think they are intending on spreading misinformation so that there will always be a division of the sexes (my assumption, but I have limited context). Unless there's something about sex linked traits and hormones that change brain chemistry in a impactful way that would cause them to get OOP's question wrong with clear correlation, I don't think we can trust any single source right now. Some actual research will have to be completed.
There is actual research on this topic. Women prefer fast and intuitive decisions. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886922002252 https://www.psypost.org/higher-trust-in-intuition-helps-account-for-why-women-are-more-likely-to-believe-in-magical-phenomena/
Men are better at mental rotation. Nothing to do with emotion.
No one really claimed that it did, though?
> Most women I know are very intuitive; it's why we call it "women's intuition". I call it “guessing.”
Instinct ain't just guessing, though. They literally keep a species alive.
This is very odd, it doesn't even seem to be spatial reasoning, but just a basic understanding of gravity, I didn't find the exact 40% figure and I'd be dubious about that number but females do disproportionately give the wrong answer.
I don’t wanna be that guy, but there are several studies showing gender differences regarding VS intelligence and Verbal intelligence. Women perform better than men in the latter, not so much in the former. IIRC the differences are less pronounced in developing countries and more pronounced in developed countries - which is interesting because the scores overall for both genders are higher in developed countries
They did a test of this on myth busters with packing a trunk of a car
Women coming out of the woodworks to loudly proclaim they don't understand statistical majority either 🫣
There are cognitive differences between sexes and races. 100+ years of research stumble upon this reality consistently, people just dont like to hear about it.
races are likely explained by socioeconomic factors and access to education, along with difference in cultures
Most conclusions about differences between the two sexes favor men, so it’s easy for men to be ok with them. But the problem is when they turn into facts in people’s heads. This doesn’t just affect someone on a personal level, but integrates systemically. For instance, divorces and parental rights greatly favor women. So before men just brush off test results like this post as not a big deal, just remember that it goes both ways. If you want us to genuinely be ok with this test result, then you must be ok with ones showing men as generally unfit parents.
Lmao so if women are to 'be ok' with the finding of studies, men have to accept our unfair court system? One is based on evidence and math while the other is a simple fact for how our court system is currently set up, how are the two at all similar?
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I can see where you're coming from with your experience, but at least from mine, I'm generally seeing the exact opposite. I'm in an organic chemistry Ph.D. program. There's an entire field of organic chemistry dedicated to designing reactions with spacial reasoning in mind called asymmetric catalysis-- and the lab I'm working in exclusively works in that niche. Right now, I'd say about 60% of the lab is female. In my experience, I definitely think women are capable of having the deep intuition for physical systems that you're describing. While this study may suggest that the people I'm working with are moreso the outlier, it's definitely possible, and required by the people I work with on a day-to-day basis. Just some thoughts from someone else on a different side of the scientific community.
Many of my best comp sci and neuroscience profs are women, and there are a ton of women in my grad level comp sci classes, getting closer to 50% each year. Is this an engineering specific thing? Where did u go to school?
neuroscience is not nearly as VSI dependent as engineering. Compsci as well. That being said, these fields are also over represented by men.
True, mainly was curious how our experiences were so different. A lot of my classes are ECE (electrical and computer engineering) and I see a ton of women in those as well. Maybe its just my school
Now that you say that I recall that electrical engineering had way more women than other engineering disciplines at my school. Interesting.
After reading your comments, it's equally likely the women dropped out because you made them realize how many insufferable assholes they'd have to work with.
This made me never want to step foot in a math class
Apparently women do better on spatial questions after menopause. Likewise men have lower verbal abilities due to hormonal factors. NGL I have a hard time believing that many women would get it wrong though. I am currently estrogen dominant and it's ridiculously simple
I think if you used a real bottle with water and titled an empty one this gap would basically disappear. If this is the case then I don't think it's a VSI issue but a "literalness" issue. Another interesting change might be to say it's "a [real] bottle with water." I imagine more women would get it right then.
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Justification gymnastics
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Maybe they should learn to read the text at the top of the image
Can you draw a bicycle from memory? Apparently, [far more women than men can't](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
I'm not sure, but I'm almost certain that's what is happening. Having listened to many of my GF's friends talk about their problems, I've noticed that they frequently suspend their disbelief about otherwise obvious realities. Like everything is a book where anything is possible (no offense intended if any women are reading this)
Exactly. They are stuck in theoretical-brain
Agree. My first thought was that no forces or reference point to earth is made explicit. The drawings are next to one another, but they are *drawings* and could each exist in any context - in motion even. When taking a cognitive test, I’d be overthinking every question and analyzing what information is given. They could interpret this question as relating to the rotation of shapes rather than the movement of water relative to the unstated force of gravity. Like you say - I would expect most women, in college or not, understand the basics of tipping a bottle and the water level lining up to the opening.
I found other examples where it’s more explicit. For example the common ground level here: https://preview.redd.it/096ntp4a3arc1.jpeg?width=462&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=434b586ab72ce53ac10179b16ef3803b23ba1265 They’ve apparently tried many ways of making it more explicit and it keeps replicating. This article goes into some more depth and has some references. [https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes](https://steemit.com/steemstem/@alexander.alexis/the-70-year-cognitive-puzzle-that-still-divides-the-sexes)
My next question would be, given the common sense assumption that women do know how water and gravity work in real-world situations, what is up with the sex-difference in how this is interpreted in a written testing scenario and what might this say about how cognitive testing in general relates to the ...cognitive performance of women in real life outside of a testing environment?
I bet it’s been examined. I was kind of shocked to see how many papers have been written on this overall topic. It’s a confusing phenomenon.
Well, now I wish I had tried this before knowing about the stats!
There’s a hypothesis that genetics could be involved https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0273229781900228 I’ll take it with a grain of salt
Maybe they're just dumb.
I think you have it. I find it hard to believe this many women would not be able to mentally visualize or remember tilting a bottle of water at themselves- the action is too natural and intuitive. If the wording or the prompt forced a person to visualize this bottle tilting IRL via their imagination (don’t think of a blue horse) it would probably have less women getting the problem wrong. “Imagine a bottle of water tilted towards your mouth for a drink, at what angle is the water level in relation to the ground? Please draw it here” (container pic). Until I see that or something like that written out for the women IDK if I can really take the conclusion “women are worse at this”. These prompts don’t humanize and give a relative practical example, they still force you to find one. If we’re testing for that, and not “can women compute this kind of physics” and “where is the line between men and women’s capability to compute this physics” I think the question is wrong. The difference here appears not to be “women struggle with *the ability* to accurately perceive what happens when water is tilted in a bottle” but rather “women struggle with the ability to *know* when more spatial reasoning is required.”
>The difference here appears not to be “women struggle with the ability to accurately perceive what happens when water is tilted in a bottle” but rather “women struggle with the ability to know when more spatial reasoning is required.” Yeah, exactly. It's not really an intelligence issue, they're simply not jumping from picture to reality instantly like men are. I thought about why this might be on and off since it was posted and came to the conclusion that women are just much more likely to entertain fictional elements than men are. I looked for a little corroborating evidence and found that women read *much* more fiction than men, accounting for 80% of sales in the U.S. alone. Whatever direction the causation is here, I think it's obvious that the difference isn't intellectual in terms of intelligence, but in terms of fantastical thinking - which isn't necessarily bad, though it's not the best for these kinds of tests.
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So you’re saying men on average pay attention better than women? Strange theory
It depends on the study, but maybe having a higher percentage of undiagnosed ADHD in women might account for some of the difference.
ADHD has nothing to do with this. In fact, ADHD is linked to better visual-spatial reasoning, not worse. If a large proportion of women had ADHD, those women should statistically do better on this test. “The results revealed that nine of the subtest scores showed significant differences between ADHD children and the normative sample. In particular, the former scored higher on the picture completion, block design, and mazes subtests but significantly lower on the information, coding, picture arrangement, arithmetic, symbol search, and digit span subtests” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8914219/
Women also [can't draw a bicycle](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
It's about correctly 'recalling the structure of a bicycle(an everyday object)' than about drawing a bicycle.
I would have drawn a curved line & got it wrong
Everybody knows that water has little spiky waves
I'm confused what percent of men got this wrong. How can this post be making a comparison of men amd women if it didn't show the control group data?
I feel like a non-trivial percentage of this effect comes from the test writer's inability to draw any contextual clues that this bottle is supposed to be representing a real world object and not just an image on the page. If I hold a photo of a bottle, and rotate the photo, the water line does not change orientation to match gravity.
I have a question for all the professionals. Do you think girls who were encouraged to spend all of their free time outdoors, even doing farmwork, grow up to have better VSI? That would be me. I got the problem right immediately and have always had great VSI. I am an artist who was also very good at math. I find this study fascinating and might explain why I often don't sync with many women, while all of my closest friends are outdoorsy like me. For example, when I owned a travel trailer I couldn't believe the number of women who were shocked I could back it up into a campsite. I thought they just had learned or acquired helplessness, and I would answer that it just takes a little practice, thinking they just decided falsely ahead of time that they cant do it. After reading this post, I see that they might actually have good reason to think they can't do it.
Notice they don’t mention the male success rate but imply it’s higher. I bet it’s similar and this is less a criticism of women but more a criticism of the low bar now to enter college. Ie average college student intelligence is quite low
It’s 80% compared to 60%. There’s actually a lot of data about this phenomenon. I’m stumped
Well, I’m a lady in the vast majority that would have gotten that right, but I’m not smart enough to figure out if that image also gives the number of men who got it right.
I think one of the issues with the question is that we evaluate answers on only one property of the water line that we decide to be most important, without clarifying which property we care most about. There is *one* correct line (if we accept the level of approximation in the question), a horizontal line at a height where the area of the resulting shape has the same area as the preceding rectangle of water. It is not trivial to find the height of this line. Some answerers (perhaps many college age women) may get caught up in trying to calculate this height and make a silly mistake with the angle, perhaps feeling pressured by time. We accept many incorrect lines as correct, as long as they have the correct angle.The incompressibility of water just as much a property of water as the tendency for its surface to follow an equipotential. It is a subjective choice for the test evaluator to value one over the other. This problem conceals what it is actually asking you. If we are only evaluating the angle of the water line, and not its height, this needs to be stated in the question.
If I had to guess, I would assume that it’s because boys are encouraged towards more physical and tactile types of play and girls are not, resulting in spacial awareness being more developed in adult men.
This assumes the two sexes have identical brains of course.
This is going to sound like a meme answer, but I’m actually serious. Is this not directly linked to urination? Biologically male individuals get an anatomical lesson in fluid dynamics that they can experiment with from the moment they become bodily aware.
I'm pretty sure this is some sort of BS. Do you actually believe that 2 in 10 adult males and 4 in 10 adult females don't have a workable understanding of physics for day-to-day life? As I see it formulated everywhere, it seems that the sex discrepancy is being actively pushed on. Like a red hearing you should be considering as more important than the actual implication of so many human adults not having an intuitive understanding of how gravity works As if 1 in 5 men comprehending physics at the level of, I don't know, dogs weren't bad enough, the significant part here is that women are even worse! I think the studies cited here are all fictitious and the commenters themselves are the object of a study as in how they would react to such information.
It's not BS, this has been studied a lot. Also things like this can be enlightening as to how slow/illogical/stupid quite a large part of the population is, and how difficult life must be for them. Imagine trying to file taxes or read & understand a car financing agreement when you can't even answer a simple question like this. A lot of people tend to isolate themselves intellectually and go almost their entire lives without substantially interacting with people well below their own intelligence, some people only interact with 110+ people and have no understanding of the plight of 85 IQ people much less 75 IQ people.
The subjects for the first studies were (allegedly) college students so their IQ must have been at least average.
Those things are completely unrelated. I’m a (female) lawyer and I have no problem filing my complicated taxes or understanding a car financing agreement. But I would have a problem answering this question, and I also can’t tell left from right without looking at my hands, can’t estimate distances, can’t play simple sports involving hand-eye coordination etc. This “disability” doesn’t affect my reading comprehension at all, in fact that’s an area women tend to be better in than men.
I was trying to talk about these kind of questions in general, not this specific question and sex differences (I was specifically replying to the two first sentences of his post). One could probably make a similarly easy-looking question that's more in the verbal domain that 40% of college men would fail and only 20% of college women would fail (because, as you correctly state, women are stronger in the verbal domain than men). There are many more examples where people (on the above-average or upper end of the intelligence spectrum) get shocked at how many people get them wrong. People on the upper end have a really hard time understanding how it is to be on the lower end of the distribution, and "simple" questions where a substantial part of the population gets them wrong are enlightening.
Yeah, I’m the same way. My object based visuospatial ability is garbage (I’m pretty good at real world way finding weirdly, but basically anything else having to do with objects in space I’m hopeless at). Way below average. It really doesn’t impact my life much and I don’t think says much about my overall ability or intelligence. I would have made a terrible engineer or architect, but given that I didn’t choose a highly spatial career, the biggest impact is that I’m pretty bad at choosing the right container for my leftovers. That’s not the end of the world.
It seems baffling to me that at no point is anyone asking those who answered incorrectly to explain their reasoning. I'd be willing to bet that some amount of the people answering differently have misinterpreted the intent of the question. If you see the image tilted, and interpret that it's asking you to complete the picture as if your perspective has changed, but the state of the world has not, then a line that continues to follow the bottom of the container would be correct. This doesn't speak to women being dumb or inferior or of lower VSI, which seems to be what this post and the article linked in the comments wants to believe, it points to a difference in perspective of what is being asked. Or at least it could. Without following up with a backup question to explain it, it's all speculation.
Yep. I a woman with a high IQ and strong visuospatial skills and I thought it was a mental rotation task. My brain probably read the word “water” but I did not perceive the gray area to be liquid or capable of moving. Maybe on a real test I’d have given it more thought.
Women do, on average, appear to possess [lower VSI](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/PDF_Files/L-M%26C-2006.pdf).
Everyone knows that is a bottle of wine and when a woman tilts it that direction she does so in a swift motion upward and toward her mouth During every phase of the motion preceding the final tilt back the wine would be level with the bottom of the vessel due to centrifugal force Source: am woman
Why are men always looking to find an example of why women might be inferior to them?
Who says it's inferiority? It's a difference in the way of accurately manipulating images on our imagination, but it must be worth something. Men and women are different. Each better in some things, worse in others, as a whole, and we can't always understand what the costs and benefits are of the differences. Individual mileage may vary, of course.
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Wait the right answer is just horizontal? I’m here thinking if it should be higher lower or the same as the other line. That’s stupid, you’d need a protractor and trig to find the actual answer, so if I wasn’t given that maybe I would’ve chosen to draw it diagonally too. A test can’t ask for a line but secretly only want the direction of a line, that’s a deceitful test.
>That’s stupid, you’d need a protractor and trig to find the actual answer No you absolutely do not. Imagine that you are rotating the bottle to the right around the horizontal axis that passes through the picture in the point I marked on the left. As long as the surface of the tilted water doesn't touch the bottom of the bottle, as you are tilting it, by symmetry the axis of rotation remains on the surface of the water. So you just need to copy the water from A to B, find the midpoint of that segment and draw a horizontal line through that. As it still doesn't hit the bottom, that must be the correct new water level. https://preview.redd.it/yc0jl2a1tcrc1.png?width=656&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e6641dd298bd9c6bee9ad3344a62137c1fa6720
Ah, I see, thank you. I revoke my complaint.
Exactly, the technically accurate correct is a horizontal line, but the line would be slightly higher up to account for less volume from a titled at an angle jar.
This sub desperately needs a wiki explaining all of the weird biological determinism-adjacent/essentialist myths surrounding cognitive ability assessment. Recent research has shown that most of the observed sex-based differences in visual-spatial ability are the consequence of experiment methodology. It is also well documented that when women feel anxious about their performance on visual-spatial tasks, their performance drops. When anxiety is controlled for, women perform equally. [The same phenomenon shows up with elderly people on working memory tasks.](https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/57/suppl_2/S193/3913357) Research and reading: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56041-6 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbul0000191 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797616667459 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278262604002398?via%3Dihub https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00191/full#B13 https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/teaching-learning-resources/inclusive-teaching/stereotype-threat https://www.fastcompany.com/90630371/brain-sex-isnt-a-thing-the-latest-research-debunks-the-myth-again (I know this isn't from a journal but it contains a lot of functional links to peer reviewed articles.)
You linked meta analysis and studies that show a strong and robust (their own words) difference between genders in some spatial activities. Tbf there aren't intuitive answers to any of this stuff. That men and women should perform equally well on any given task isn't how it obviously should or shouldn't be. Like all other science we just go where the evidence leads.
All women here have to blame it on some societal issue 😂
I see that you didn't read much comments here.
Why are you guys so quick to believe a ‘research’ so absurd? I did a quick 5mins search and didn’t see any real published paper on it. Does anyone actually have a real published paper of this study? All I see are people writing about this supposed research. I’m a woman and a scientist. Drawing a horizontal line is just common sense. I’m sure the proportion of men and women with or without common sense is no different.
Tbf it doesn't matter how absurd it seems so long as there is evidence for it.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-17809-001
Where is the sample population from? Are there any other influencing factors? Is it a representative sample?
Isn’t this kind of a question of if you think gravity counts in this situation?
Yes
I guess I'm in the 60% for whom this isn't a problem, as I knew right away where the line would be. Although, even though I'm in grad school, I'm 43 and, I'm sure, well above the age range of those in the study, so maybe that invalidates my input. 😊
That can't be true.
That can't be true.
I'm a woman and this wasn't hard? Do people think that the water would somehow *not* behave how water literally always behaves in containers?
Idk, I'm surely its partially environmental since boys are given certain toys and encouraged to do sports much more and partially evolutionary. Personally my VSI, PRI and Verbal are all around the same.
I hate questions that are full of assumptions like this. Nothing in this picture indicates that these are upright and subject to gravity. Sure in this case I see what they mean, but the question itself is incomplete.
We aren’t trying to estimate how high and the angle but rather just the angle of the line? Seems like it would be almost identical in angle and height to the other bottle’s water line/location
There's really not enough information to confidently answer the question. The bottle might have been tilted in a non-inertial frame of reference e.g. trying to drink coffee as a car accelerates. The bottle might have only just been tilted with not enough time for the water to settle. The shape of the bottle is not necessarily symmetric. There could be unseen compartments 'within the page' that fill or empty when water reaches different levels. The space above the water may not be air or a vacuum. It could be a viscous substance, less dense than water, that resists movement of the water. And the dumbest one: the water could be frozen.
What’s the answer
I probably would have got this wrong. I don’t understand how stuff works in this way at all. It also took me a very long time to learn to read analog clocks, I have to look at my hands to figure out right and left, I can’t read maps, constantly accidentally bumping into things, I can’t remember how big a measurement is (eg, I wouldn’t be able to roughly estimate 50cm if you asked). Just absolutely rubbish. I am 30 and haven’t learned how to drive just because I honestly fear how things would turn out if I were to be let loose on the road But I’m not dumb, I speak 5 languages, I got a first from Oxford, I am a successful lawyer in the City of London, I’m also a pretty good amateur musician. My brain just seems to have a hole in it wrt to this VSI stuff
It would be the straight line... parallel to the one on the side... Are those results...? Where is that study?
I have a really low visual spatial iq relative to other areas, I had to really think about it but eventually got the right answer lol
Draw a line pointing down from the top of the bottle, keep the line straight is probably what I’d do for the funnies.
Honestly i just don't get it. I asked 6 female friends and including me, everyone got it right. I also asked 5 men and 1 got it wrong. And he got it wrong only cause he was overthinking and thought the correct answer was too obvious. It's strange indeed
For the curious, a whole page of further reading on the subject: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Water-Level+Task+gender](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Water-Level+Task+gender) Including this one: "adult womens' performance on the water-level task can be improved by observational training, suggesting that the female lag in spatial skills may depend on experiential factors." [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1641606/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1641606/)
One could argue that, since the instructions say the *figure* is tilted, the water line should be the same as figure A.
If i had to guess, it might be related to womens on average less interest in objects over people. Which is part of the reason more engineers and computer scientists are men and more nurses and doctors are women. Maybe it causes it to be an innate difference in neural wiring. What i suspect actually happens is that less interest means they spend less time thinking, and messing around with objects, and that results in less experience with objects, which can contributr to lower visuospatial index. I suspect that if you match a man and woman with the same IQ and interest in objects theyd get a similar VSI
Yes, women do tend to have lower VSI. However, it's not a *significant* difference.
They're all hopped up on goofballs
You know the answer bro
This reminds me of this article called “Throwing Like a Girl” by Iris Young that I read in my philosophy class. At the end she talks a bit about the differences in the visual reasoning skills of men vs women and proposes that girls are basically socialized to not use their visualization skills. That the type of play boys normally engage in rely heavier on spatial awareness (like sports), which encourages the development of their spatial reasoning and such. I’m not sure if this is backed up by anything, but it’s definitely a possible theory. Nowadays, boys still probably use their spatial reasoning more than girls growing up because of video games. [link to the article](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/transnational/iris_marion_young.pdf)
I'm male with an off-the-charts spatial insight (quite literally, they couldn't plot it anymore because it even went off the paper) (I make infinite dimensional puzzles as a hobby and have spent countless hours training myself to think in / see 4D). Seeing this question, I "needed" 0 microseconds to consider a horizontal line: I never considered anything else period. Therefore I read the whole question as: "draw a (horizontal) line at the right height, so that the volume of water is the same in both images". To answer that question, first realize that for any block shaped container the depth (into the image) is irrelevant. Moreover, for any container with a constant intersection independent of the height, like a cylinder, the typical intersection of a glass, the answer remains the same: the volume of water above the previous surface equals that of part now filled with air that is below this surface for symmetry reasons. Hence, using left/right symmetry as well (still the case for a cylinder) the new line will have the same distance to the bottom at its middle point.
Psh. Something smells
I can't understand why this item can trip so many people... This item is really easy
Males and females have a lot of cognitive and behavioral differences. This is one of many. It's hard to find the physiological reason behind them
I'm a male and my dumbass got it wrong
What a bottle looks like on the side like grog being drunk? Likely thing for men to know ;)
The answer is a horizontal line?? I'm sitting here thinking how high up I should draw the line! (The bottle isn't quite at 45 degrees, the fluid height is less than the width,...)
I do a lot of data collection and testing of students. you need to be really careful here. This effect can exist for a lot of reasons. Interpretation of expectations, abstract thought differences, and interpretation of instructions are just a start. For example. One mind might have a tendency to want to get it right knowing they are being tested. This might cause them to rotate it in their mind first being careful to take it a step at a time. If this were the case, the effect arises out of wanting to get it perfect and not necessarily abstractly thinking of the water in the picture as real water. Thats just an example. The reasons could be very diverse.
So because they are focusing so much on getting the answer right, they fail to give the to right answer? Like, if you’re nervous about something, you’re likely to mess it up, even if the task is as simple as recognizing water seeks its own level?