Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | A study from Arizona State University published in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, found that gender greatly influenced how intelligent a person thought they were, especially when compared to others. The study asked 250 students in a college biology classroom to estimate their own intelligence and compare it to others in the class.
In the results, men said on average they were smarter than about 66 percent of the class, whereas for women it was 54 percent (even when both had a 3.3 GPA). Male students were 3.2 times more likely than females to say they were smarter than the person they worked with most, no matter if they were male or female.
“Over and over again, women would tell me that they were afraid that other students thought that they were ‘stupid’,” says Katelyn Cooper, the study’s lead author, “I never heard this from the men in those same biology classes; so I wanted to study it.”
“It’s a mindset that has likely been engrained in female students since they began their academic journeys,” she added.