Thursday, January 03, 2008

Gay men can't navigate either


Gay men are as bad as women at navigating, research has shown.

Both share the same poor sense of direction and rely on local landmarks to get around, a study suggests.

Thank you very much, some of us are rather good at navigating!
They are also slower to take in spatial information than heterosexual men.

How this relates to parking a car - a task women famously struggle with, according the stereotype - is open to question.


Men consistently outperform women on tasks requiring navigation and discovering hidden objects. Women, on the other hand, are more successful in tests requiring them to remember where objects lie.
Even when the object is staring straight male in the face.

I don't really know what any of this means, mind, or if it actually makes any difference. I just wondered who decided to research it, and also who paid for it....

3 comments:

Devil's Kitchen said...

It's also slightly misleading. All of the research that I have seen on the subject suggests that men have a greater variance around the mean than women.

That is to say that whilst many men are better than women, many men are also worse. Women tend to be more clustered around the mean.

The gayer bit makes sense as it has been proposed that the way that gay men's brains work is rather closer to women's. However, there are other factors that affect these things, such as handedness.

DK

Anonymous said...

Watch it - us left handed are more sinister than gauche.
As you get older you will enjoy going down 'no through roads' and getting bruises from impulsive dynanism.
Well that is what I tell my wife!
sig - lefty cramer

Mr Eugenides said...

We know gay men's spatial awareness is faulty: they are forever putting their dicks in the wrong hole.

I thank you. (Missed me, haven't you? Admit it!)