Objectifying Gaze Subtracts From Women’s Math Abilities

When a man looks at a woman in that way, her math skills suffer, according to a study that will be published in the March issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Pennsylvania State University at University Park asked 150 undergraduates at a large university in the Midwest — 67 women and 83 men — to participate in what they were told was a study of how people work together in teams. Instead, says Sarah J. Gervais, the lead author, the study examined how being visually “checked out” by a member of the opposite sex affected each student’s performance on math problems.

“We found that the objectifying gaze caused decreased math performance for women, but somewhat ironically we also found that the same women that were objectified also wanted more interaction with the person that had objectified them,” Ms. Gervais says in a videotaped interview with the editor of the journal. More . Don Troop

H/T keithincda

So this explains why I’m so bad at math! Or not. What do you think about this study?