The mental traits of sex : an experimental investigation of the normal mind in men and women / by Helen Bradford Thompson.

  • Helen Thompson Woolley
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mental traits of sex : an experimental investigation of the normal mind in men and women / by Helen Bradford Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that of men, and their number of unique words greater than that of men. The second method consisted in requiring the first association to each of a list of given words. Neither investigator discovered any differ- ence by this method. They agree in finding some classes of words mentioned more frequently by one sex than by the other, such as food-stuffs by women. But as both Miss Calkins (13) and Miss Tanner (79) have pointed out, this fact points not to original sex- ual difference in type of mental activity, but to dif- ference of training and surroundings from childhood on. There are no previous tests on ingenuity and gen- era] information with which those above recorded may be compared. It is well known that in school work girls have better records on the whole than boys (55, p- 1045). But the general average of school work is not comparable to the results of our test on general information. The former takes account of the way in which the lessons assigned are learned, the latter of the amount of definite information which the individual has at hand when it is suddenly called for. There are a few other investigations which have a more or less remote bearing on the intellectual tests. Lindley (47), investigating puzzle interests, says that he discovered no difference in the age at which the various puzzle interests develop in the two sexes. He attributes this failure to the small number of indi- viduals investigated. Dearborn (19), studying the imagination by means of ink blots, found no difference between the sexes. Minot (58), found greater uni- formity in women’s diagrams than in men’s. Miss Cal- kins (12), investigating the mathematical consciousness,