Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. HOMEPAGE

These 2 cognitive biases may explain why girls fall behind in tech, engineering, and math

While women are well-represented in the science world, men still prevail in jobs related to technology, engineering, and math — at a ratio of roughly four to one.

Advertisement

This may be a matter of aptitude at the professional level, but only because boys are often pushed toward these fields when girls are not.

For psychologists studying education, that early gap is crucial. 

girl math
Flickr/woodleywonderworks

If you're excited about a subject, you'll want to do it more. If you feel inadequate, you'll shy away.

The problem is that we humans have a poor understanding of our abilities. We don't know our strengths and weaknesses. And it's this issue that can fill kids with self-doubt and turn otherwise bright students into ones who think they're not.

Advertisement

Here are the two biggest cognitive biases that limit student achievement:

Positivity bias

If you take a random group of boys and girls and give them the same math problems, chances are they'll get similar test scores. But if you follow up with each student and ask them how they think they did, you'll quickly realize that, while the girls give a fairly accurate account, the boys will think they did much better than their scores show. Importantly, they'll be more likely to tell you they're interested in pursuing math as a career.

That scenario was the premise of a recent study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of Washington. They were studying positivity bias, an error in judgment where a person overestimates their abilities. (You can test yours here.)

According to Heather Lench, a psychologist at Texas A&M, the positivity bias boys hold about math could be giving them a leg up later in life.

Advertisement

"Math is a difficult subject for most people," Lench said recently, "and we speculate that positivity biases might help bolster people as they are initially struggling to master math concepts."

Girls may be on equal ground with boys in math, but if the boys think they're doing better, they'll enjoy the act of persistence more. 

Remedying that difference, Lench says, requires giving girls constructive feedback on their performance. That way, they'll have more positive feelings the next time they confront a problem.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

In 1999, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered a quirk in how we compare our abilities to others.

Advertisement

They found that unskilled people will tend to grossly overestimate their abilities specifically because they are unskilled. Meanwhile, highly skilled people will tend to underestimate their abilities because they don't realize just how high above average they are.

The resulting effect, which the researchers handily named after themselves, could help explain why gaps in achievement persist.

A mountain of research shows girls actually outperform boys in most subjects, including math and science. But it seems to be the case that girls discount their actual skill while boys can't recognize their deficiencies. According to Dunning and Kruger, this can lead the competent group — in this case, girls — to feel average even when they out-perform boys. Boys, meanwhile, might feel superior when they're really behind. 

Or, as Dunning and Kruger put it in their original report, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

Advertisement

In both cases, people's impression of what's true gets clouded by their own abilities. 

But as with the positivity bias, most errors in judgment fade away once people receive feedback about where they truly stand. 

Innovation
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.

Jump to

  1. Main content
  2. Search
  3. Account