The decision making process is different for girls and boys

The decision making process is different for girls and boys

by digby

I hate to say it, but well ... duh:
Neuroscientists have uncovered evidence suggesting that, when the pressure is on, women bring unique strengths to decision making...

Across a variety of gambles, the findings were the same: Men took more risks when they were stressed. They became more focused on big wins, even when they were costly and less likely.

Levels of the stress hormone cortisol appear to be a major factor, according to Ruud van den Bos, a neurobiologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He and his colleagues have found that the tendency to take more risks when under pressure is stronger in men who experience a larger spike in cortisol. But in women he found that a slight increase in cortisol seemed actually to improve decision-making performance.

Are we all aware when our decision making skews under stress? Unfortunately not. In a 2007 study, Stephanie D. Preston, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues told people that after 20 minutes, they would have to give a talk and would be judged on their speaking abilities. But first, they had to play a gambling game. Anxious, both men and women initially had a harder time making good decisions in the game.

But the closer the women got to the stressful event, the better their decision making became. Stressed women tended to make more advantageous decisions, looking for smaller, surer successes. Not so for the stressed men. The closer the timer got to zero, the more questionable the men’s decision making became, risking a lot for the slim chance of a big achievement.

The men were also less aware that they had used a risky strategy. In the last few minutes of the game, Dr. Preston interrupted each person immediately after he or she had just lost money. She asked people to rate how risky each of their possible choices had been, including the unsuccessful one they had just made. Women were more likely to rate their losing strategy as a poor one.

Consult folk wisdom on this and you'll see that people have noticed this since ... forever. (Of course our patriarchal society chose to characterize these different approaches as signs of men's "strength" and women's "weakness" but that's a different story. And really, far more important ...)

To borrow a macho sports metaphor, there's a time for a bold Hail Mary and there's a time for grinding it out a few yards at a time.  It would be good for the human race if there was a better balance of temperament in the halls of power. We need all the help we can get.

*And yes, all of these observations are tremendously broad and individuals of either sex cannot be easily defined by them.  Still, it's interesting to see neuroscience back up some of the differences in the way men and women often tend to go about organizing their thoughts and greeting challenges that people have "known" for ages.


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