I.Q. Chauvinism It’s A Guy Thing

Are men smarter than women? No. But men seem to think so - and so do women.

In fact, men think they’re smarter than they actually are, while women underestimate their intelligence, claim British psychologists Adrian Furnham and Richard Rawles in the latest Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.

Furnham and Rawles asked 245 British psychology students to estimate their own IQs as well as the IQs of members of their families.

“Males rated their IQs higher than females (118 vs. 112) and both sexes rated their fathers’ IQs higher than their mothers’ (115 vs. 108). Similarly, grandfathers received higher IQ estimates (106) than grandmothers (99),” they wrote.

Their research is only the latest in a series of studies that found people believe men to be smarter than women. In the United States, 11 separate studies found that women consistently underestimated their IQs, and nearly all thought their fathers had higher IQs than their mothers.

Actually, there’s some evidence that suggests men may score a wee bit higher on standardized IQ tests. National studies in the United States and Scotland found that the average IQ of men is 101.16 while for women it’s 99.38 -not enough to make a real difference and certainly not enough to confer brainpower bragging rights to men.

But that doesn’t stop guys. In a study published earlier this year, researchers reported that they asked men and women to estimate their own IQs, and then compared them to their real scores. Male self-estimates were significantly higher than their measured IQs while female self-estimates were lower.

“These results suggest that maybe males could be given counseling for IQ hubris and females for humility,” Furnham and Rawles concluded.

Positive pessimism

Wherever you look, the cult of optimism holds sway in the U.S.A.: Keep the faith … You gotta believe … American ends with “I Can” - et cetera and ad nauseam. America prides itself as a can-do kind of place, where even little trains confronted with big, tall mountains can overcome - but only if they think they can.

Now there’s growing evidence that pessimism isn’t so bad after all. In fact, millions of Americans are more successful at difficult and anxiety-producing tasks when they think they’ll fail.

It’s called defensive pessimism, “a strategy that many people use when they’re facing situations where they feel anxious and out of control and consciously set low expectations to overcome their anxieties,” said psychologist Julie K. Norem of Wellesley College.

If you’re not a defensive pessimist, you’ve met one. He’s the guy who went into the high school French final moaning that he was going to tank the test and then aced it - quelle surprise! Or she’s the woman at work who convinces everyone she’s going to blow her big presentation to the boss - only to wow her way into that corner office.

They’re not being deceitful, hyper-modest or coy. Defensive pessimists do dwell on the disasters that they truly fear lie ahead. “Somewhat ironically, however, reviewing all of the things that could go wrong may help them to plan specific ways to avoid the disasters,” Norem and psychologist Stacie Spencer of the University of Miami write in a paper summarizing their research into the phenomenon. “When they are prevented from ‘thinking through’ prior to a performance, defensive pessimists report more negative feelings and actually perform more poorly.”

How many Americans are defensive pessimists? No one is sure. Among students, Norem found that about 30 percent could be called defensive pessimists. In a study of nurses, about one in four fell into that category. She also suspects that many professional performers are defensive pessimists.

“But it varies,” Norem said. “As they say, there are no pessimistic life insurance salespeople.”

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