I'm putting this into "Casual Conversation" because I don't have a question for debate. However, I believe this is relevant to any issue involving the sexes.

It seems to me that there are small but real statistical differences between the psychology of the sexes. This does not change the fact that individual differences are far more important.

With that in mind, I offer you the following test from the BBC. It seems to be much more scientific than most such tests. Of course, this sort of thing should always be taken with a grain of salt. If nothing else, I hope you will find it interesting.

Link

The test should take 15 to 30 minutes, I think, and you will need a ruler which can accurately measure in millimeters.

The results you will get will be very detailed. I will not share all of them here. It should be noted how the overall score works. Someone who is perfectly androgynous will score a zero. The average woman will score 50% towards the female side, and the average man will score 50% towards the male side.

If you would care to share some of your results here, I'm sure we would all find it of interest. My score was about 25% female, which seems about right. I believe that I am fairly androgynous, leaning a bit to female. It may be of interest to note that I did very poorly on both empathizing (female) and systematizing (male), but that I did well on both reading emotions (female) and 3-D rotation (male.) I did very well on verbal fluency, which probably tipped me over to the female side.

Well, I slot right into the average male score. 50%

I'm not sure what that proves, except that I own my penis by rights I guess.

I took this test a few months ago. It's a long one. I was well into the male category.

I scored about 25% female. Despite very low empathy (you jerks) and very high systematizing.

I scored 50 on the male side. I guess that I also own my penis by rights.

Oh wait...

50 percent female brain. Exactly average.

I'm kind of surprised...I always considered myself to think more like a man, but it must be my natural inherently superior sense of empathy.

I fall right square on Female 50. I did really well in the spatial test, am terrible in emphathising, outscore men on sytemising, did very well in words, I'm left brained... No surprises, except the end result.

In past IQ tests, I have been off the charts on the spatial stuff. For this one, I missed that there were rotations on the block things. I just counted the block segments and answered. This definitely lowered my "masculinity" score. Which is totally ironic, because the summary told me that I might have to rotate maps to read them. Which I do. HA!

I scored 50% female. Maybe Cyan and me should get together? She's a man (it seems). I'm a woman (apparently). We both have needs... and each other's genitalia. I want mine back - I miss being able to stand up while I *ahem* - you get the idea.

I will post more seriously when I get access to my test results (I'm not on my usual PC, so I can't remember the scores.)

It's enough, for now, that while none of the individual test results surprised me, I find some of the top-level interpretation open to challenge.

Hm...I find the outcome of this a little circumspect. I scored 0, so Im apparently perfectly androgenous...

I scored extremely high on the 3D shapes portion, but about average on Angles. Another thing that is sort of confusing is that I scored fairly high on the Eyes part of the test, suggesting that I am good at emphathizing; however, I scored very very low (2 out of ten, well below average) on emphathy section of the Empathy and Systems part of the test...Am I good at emphathizing or not?!

I'd offer to lend you mine, but the fear of what might happen to my mind if I did is making me hesitate...

I scored 0. I was right in the middle. Of course, I wasn't paying attention completely.

While I did extremely well in coming up with synonyms for the two words offered in the test, I clearly showed an aversion to working with systems. And I didn't quite get the thing about finger length. Oh well.

While I seemed to have a 50/50 type balance in some areas, I was attracted to masculine faces considerably more than to feminine ones. What can I say? I enjoy being a girl!

Thanks for the link!

50% male for me. Not too surprising, I've never been good at reading emotions or empathizing...

I got the same result. I would interpret it this way. We are good at detecting the emotions of other people (in this test, reading emotions from eyes) but not particularly good at sharing those emotions. (This doesn't mean we are cold-blooded, evil people, but that we probably have a tendency to be somewhat more objective than subjective when it comes to the emotions of others.)

I scored 50% female. I really went for the 'masculine' faces, apparently.

My score was 0, so I guess I should feel emasculated.

In my defense, the evaluation does not actually associate a score of 0 with androgyny. What it does say is:In my case, I aced the male tests and the female tests, too. I had a preference for female faces, but my hand ratios are skewed by age/arthritis well into the female range. My 0 probably just means I'm a well-balanced test-taker as a result of my profession/education/age/interests. Reading the evaluation, several of the tests apparently have no statistical correlation with gender (Thumbs, Eyes, and Ultimatum, in particular). But it was fun and interesting, as these things go.

The final scores seem to be in multiples of 25%. Did anyone get a score other than 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100?

I'm apparently 25% Female. I have no problem with this, but I have no idea how the score is calculated. Like Seamus, I'm not quite sure what some of these questions are doing here in the first place. The average score for men on Eyes, for example, is 6.6 out of 10, while the average score for women on the same test is... 6.6 out of 10. I scored 8 out of 10, so this allegedly makes me more "female". Okay... why?

I got 20 out of 20 on Angles, which makes me super-male, I guess, but I also scored 12 out of 14 on Spot the Difference - which makes me super-female. The Hands exercise indicates that I am left-brained, which seems to conform to the testers' "male" stereotype. On Emotions and Systems, I scored 8/20 on Empathising, placing me closer to the "male" zone and 11/20 on Systemising, again placing me in the "male" zone. I scored 8/10 on the Eyes test in which there is no difference between men and women as mentioned above. The test analyst tells us that women are better empathisers than men - without providing a shred of evidence and despite the fact that this test indicates that there is no difference whatsoever in "reading eyes".

My Fingers measurements were .98 and .97, which places me solidly in the male arena (in fact, I seem to have a "more masculine finger ratio" than the average). Faces indicated that, because I dislike large jaws and thin lips, I am attracted to the feminine (there was no option for finding both choices particularly ugly, though I doubt that would have affected the results much). Finally, I scored 11 out of 12 on the 3D Shapes test, which is about as masculine as one can get, evidently, without cheating.

In short, I scored one super-male, one super-female, three solid males, one neuter, one hyper-male, one attracted-to-the-feminine (I don't know whether this is "male" or "female", so I'll class this as neuter as well), and one dripping-with-testosterone - six male, two neutral, one female, right? And that all adds up to 25% Female??? Either these people have never heard of basic math or the Eyes part of the test is so heavily weighted that it offsets every other section of the whole Sex ID parade - despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the assertion that this part of the test has any meaning at all. Something tells me this thing is not as scientific as it might like to be...

By the way, the Professor Baron-Cohen of Cambridge that was responsible for the weighty Eyes portion of the test is the father of Sacha Baron-Cohen of Ali G and Borat fame. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

Possibly, I am always accused of being "too left-brained" by my "too right-brained" ex boyfriend. (ha) Another thing I found a little off, was that my left thumb covers my right thumb when I clasp my hands together...Which is supposed to suggest Im right brained, but I feel solidly more left-brained...

And uh...Im with Wertz, I found most of the choices for faces equally unattractive, and I often felt at a loss of which one to pick. I may prefer more feminine faces, but a quick review of all my exes proves that, at least in looks, there's an equal mix of both characteristics...On an interesting note, Ive always dated guys that were decidedly not masculine (ie, they could've been my gay best friend or something), regardless of the way they looked.

Much like my math scores I got a 0 which I think means I'm David Bowie. While I'm all man I have a large vocabulary... Seems also that my large hands, inability to see differences and complete lack of empathy skewed things.

I ended up on the 25% male side. I scored:

• Angles: 16 out of 20
• Spot the difference: 43%
• Hands: left thumb up
• Empathizing: 12 out of 20
• Systemizing: 15 out of 20
• Eyes: 6 out of 10
• Fingers: Right Hand: 0.98, Left Hand: 0.97
• Faces: Your choices suggest you prefer more feminine faces. (and I do... )
• 3D shapes: 11 out of 12.
• Words: 14 words total

I scored higher than average (for both sexes) on angles, empathizing, systemizing, 3D shapes and Words. I'm just below average for women on Spot the difference.

It seems that what makes me a man is my attraction to feminine women and and the size of my fingers. I've always said so, myself.

Interestingly enough, during the test, I thought I was doing horribly with Words... I came up with 7 for each fairly quickly and then started getting frustrated that I couldn't come up with more.

I apparently prefer masculine features. I tried the male photos and that was the result. But, I found most of the men so unattractive that I decided to look at female faces and see what came up. Again, I like manish features. I guess if I swung both ways I'd prefer manish females.

But, good grief, those women weren't very attractive either.

Well, there are couches and there are crackers... and I wouldn't kick some of those women off the former for eating the latter.

Oh thank goodness someone who wasn't me said that. I considered going to Kate Beckinsale's website to choose from those pictures instead! Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer. Strongly Prefer.

Right. Now I've got the time, and my results in front of me, I'd like to echo Wertz questioning tone.

My results in each section were:

Angles: 11/20. Average for men 15.1, women 13.3Fair enough. I was trying to complete these tests while at work, so I was having to complete them in fits & starts, but I've taken this particular test before with similar results.

Spot the differences: 50% - men: 39%, women 46% I didn't remember where stuff was because of an y innate genetic difference, but because of a learned skill - mnemonics. I'd look at the pictures and thing "an elephant is doing the ironing wearing a hat and holding a bunch of flowers in its trunk". I can still remember that mnemonic now, two days after I took the test - that's the whole point of them. I know I have the typical male memory for this type of thing, so I've trained myself how to remember it.

For those who are interested, it started with a school-age playground memory game where you'd get people to give you ten random words to remember, and you'd recite them back perfectly hours or even days later. It impressed the hell out of the other kids, but the trick was simple. You picture an object that rhymes with the numbers one to ten - one might be gun, two shoe, three tree, and so on - then you conjure up a mental image of whatever word is called out with the corresponding number. The more ridiculous, obscene or humorous the better; that kind of thing sticks in the memory better as an image than it ever would as a random sequence of words. (It's quite commonplace, but occasionally it's still good fun at parties, etc.)

So my score doesn't make me a woman, it makes me a man who knows his limitations and has learned a way to cheat them.

Hands: right thumb on top So I'm left-brained. More analytical, certainly. Occasionally tending towards an argumentative android (when Star Trek Voyager first aired over here some of my close friends ribbed me that I must know the screenwriters, since the Doctor's personality was clearly modelled on mine. But who needs friends, anyway?). A semi-interesting aside, this doesn't seem to have anything at all with brain gender, but I'm guessing that some BBC Interactive producer has zoomed in on the word "verbal" and assumed that "left-brain" equates to "female" and crowbarred this into the overall scoring.

'Cos, as we all know, the effects of oesstrogen on the human brain make it into an emotionless computing machine. *ahem*

Empathising: 6/20; men 7.9; women 10.6
Systemising: 15/20; men 12.5; women 8.0
Pretty clearly male, I'd say, and the first test in this battery which most people would say was measuring things which people would say was useful day-to-day in understadning gender behaviours. (I'll come back to this later.)

Eyes: 7/10; men & women 6.6 As Wertz pointed out, the genders come out equal on this one, so I've no idea why it's in the test.

And I don't know about anyone else, but I found myself more interested in trying to guess the celebrity they'd used for the pictures than trying to pick the one word out of four that was supposed to be represented by Tom Cruise's cropped publicity photo, or whomever. More often than not, none of the words represented the "emotion" being felt quite so much as the one that wasn't on the list: "thinking about all the money I'm making from posing for this photo".

In my own score, however, this seemed to make me resolutely female. Despite my empathy score being resolutely male, and the gender difference being negligible. Another way to read the scores in the "emotion" section could be that I have higher than normal skills in reading emotions in others, but I really don't care what they are. i.e. I know what people around me are feeling, but care little, unless it's useful to my carefully-systemised plans. Doesn't that say little about my gender, but indicate I might be a sociopath?

(I hope not, but hope my hyperbole shows how easy it is to spin these results to show whatever I set out to show, just as I think the people behind this BBC-constructed set of disparate tests set out to surprise and entertain more than they set out to inform or educate.)

Fingers: R-0.95; L-.97, average 0.96. Male average: 0.982; female: 0.982. Again, comfortably male, but presumably weighted against, or not as heavily weighted for, in the overall result, by the (presumably) liberal arts graduates who cobbled together the BBC tests.

Faces: I prefer feminine faces Again, interesting, but from the results of other members here, it's independent of sexual orientation and doesn't appear to contribute to the overall result anyway. Edutainment, with the emphasis on the tainment and not the edu.

3D Shapes: 9/12; men 8.2 women 7.1 Again, emphatically male.


My average is 10.5 - male - but the bit that made me wonder is italicised. Presumably, I could have put "cheese, gravity, springtime, eraser, pinenuts, constitution, of, the, united, states, whine, grunt, cannot, think, of, any, more, words" under the heading "grey" and got a massively female score.

(There's a mysogynist gag in there about the mark of femininity being an inability either shut up or to stick to the damned point, but I'll let is slide )

Ultimatum: £25 Under pressure of time, I didn't read the question properly (maleness again?), so I didn't realise I was making a blind bid.

Even so, "sex differences are small in this task", so there you go.

To summarise, on the first two tests I came out female. The third, MALE (2f1M). The fourth (thumbs) is not gender related according to the explanation, but measures braind side dominance. The fifth, MALE (2f2m). The sixth, MALE (2f3m). The seventh, "Eyes", shows no gender bias in the results, so me being a bit better than average at reading emotions makes no difference to my brain gender, right? Test 8, MALE (2f4m). Test 9 (faces) isn't gender-based, but even if it were, I'd presumably come out male because I like feminine faces. Test 10, MALE (2f5m). Test 11, MALE (2f6m). Test 12, charitably assuming it really is gender based when one reads the question properly - FEMALE - making my final running total 3 female results to 6 male.

SO how do I come out as being averagely FEMALE, unless the tests are weighted in some absurd, or the tests which the authors themselves say are gender-neutral are being factored in as female somehow (AND, based on my results, weighted by more than the tests where I come out male).

As such, I have to say that the website is certainly a diverting entertainment, but about as much use as a chocolate fireman when it comes to real enlightenment.

My score is 50% male. Supposedly average.

Angles: 14/20. Supposedly more female.
Spot the Difference: 21%. Supposedly very male. Or just scatterbrained...
Hands: Right thumb on top. Supposedly because I'm more analytical, but right-handedness is socially encouraged. And no mention of gender differentiation.
Empathizing: 15/20. I'm not sure a self evaluation really says anything here.
Systemising: 8/20. Typically female.
Eyes: 8/10. Um... if averages for the genders are exactly the same how can they say that "Your result suggests you are a good empathiser, sensitive to other people's emotions. Women generally fall into this category."?
Fingers: right- .97 left .98. So very manly, I guess.
Faces: "Your choices suggest you prefer more masculine faces." No surprise there, and no explanation of gender differentiation.
3D Shapes: 9/12. "If you scored 7 - 9: In past studies, 50 per cent of the people who scored in this range were women and 50 per cent were men."
Words: 3 words for "grey", 5 for "happy". Strong, silent male type or doing the test at work and distracted? Or barely literate?
Ultimatum: £25. I read the question and have to say their reasoning about risks and compromise ignore the question of fairness, which was foremost in my reasoning. Surely that can't be unusual...