Re: Gender and Cognitive Style

From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Sat Nov 21 1998 - 11:48:52 MST


> Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> > At 12:30 PM 11/20/98 -0500, Mikey wrote:
> >
> > >I would say that since women have a dominant right brain, while men are
> > >dominant left, usually, of course
> >
> > What? *What????* WHAAAAH
>

One of the place I learned this was in ski instructing. The PSIA programs tell
why its easier to teach women to ski than men. Since instinctive eye/foot
coordination is a right brained function (as I guess are most functions of
coordination, and the right brain does the geometric cognitive finctions as
well), and women are dominant right brainers, women more easily develop the
skills to ski than men, who wind up overanalyzing everything with their left
brains, which bogs up their right hemisphere's ability to oversee the muscular
coordination. For a guy to learn to ski, they have to conciously a) stop
thinking about it and just do it. Only once they've developed the skill of
putting their right brain in charge can they use their left brain to make
little suggestions about angulation, pressure, torsion, etc.

I can take any woman who is not mentally retarded or physically impaired and
make her a lower intermediate to upper intermediate skiier (depending on their
self confidence level) within one hour of putting skis on at the hill. A guy
will take at least twice, if not four or five times as long to get to the same
point. Some guys never get that far. With skiing, how good a woman gets
depends on her self confidence; how good a guy gets depends on how long it
takes for him to pull his head out, stop thinking about it, and how well he
listens to what his ski instructor actually says. A guy who is plateaued out
at a low level is that way because they have dominant personalities which
cannot surrender control to anybody or anything.

Mike Lorrey



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