236
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
236 points (83.3% liked)
Showerthoughts
29525 readers
264 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The chess one isnt quite right. There's been experiments where if a woman player didn't know her opponent was a man she would perform better. It's called stereotype threat phenomenon.
It also happens when a male player knowingly goes up against someone higher in the league than himself and he performs below his own standard average.
Basically people in general psyche themselves out of their best performance when going against someone they perceive to be better than them whether that's factual or not. Confidence and undermining confidence can change a whole lot about how a person does in any given game or task.
There's an effect on both sides.
Contrary to what people assume, aggressive chess is a good strategy.
Due to a lot of factors I don't really want to get into, most chess players think men are naturally better than women.
So a woman who thinks she's playing a man is immediately on the defense, and a man who thinks he's playing a woman starts out very aggressively.
Which means a man and woman of equal skill, the man will likely win.
It's called stereotype difference and it's not just chess related.
I don't know why people always pick chess because there's no physical difference while ignoring the mind games we even play on ourselves in those situations.
Just people completely ignorant of what they're talking about and grasping at straws to find something that agrees with them
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051
You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?
Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it's statistically significant enough in this context
Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.
By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.
It's a phenomenon that's been observed across multiple sports, not just between men and women chess players. It's particularly poignant in men vs women's chess... because of people repeatedly telling women they are inherently worse than men. Like you are doing right now.
There's been multiple studies on this. So yes, I side with the data that stereotype threat phenomenon has a significant impact on women's performance in chess against men.
Show me. Link me a couple.
I don't think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let's look at the research. I couldn't find anything from a quick search but maybe I'm using wrong terms.
The bigger difference imo is the brain development due to hormones in the womb. Old TLC program had a whole section on this suggesting it's why STEM fields are generally male dominated. Turns out hormones that determine biological gender also very much effect the development of the brain, and the male chemicals tend to develop the spatial reasoning part of the brain faster/more thoroughly than those who get don't get the male chemicals and stay female. This average higher spatial reasoning capacity creates an advantage in tasks or objectives where complex visualizations are necessary, like visualizing chess moves in your head.
It's not some massive, overwhelming difference, but it's enough to tilt the table. Play out that average enough and you have 42 women out of 2500 chess grandmasters
TLC is name I have not heard on a long time. Did they really use the term "biological gender"?
Bro they had a lot of wild shit back in the day. I remember that term specifically because they couldn't use the word "sex" on the program and had to bend over backwards using every other possible phrase.