Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Find out your brainsex

British neuropsychologist Dr Anne Moir is at the front line of the struggle to try and make the boys in Britain's schools enthusiastic about learning. Body sex does not necessarily match brain sex so Dr Moir has devised a test to determine the gender of the brain.

I scored a six, which is decidedly male, with some feminine traits- fair enough. But I wonder, is it just that I fit certain stereotypes, or are they stereotypes because they're true? I'd be curious to see if transsexuals score as being in the wrong body, or if the body controls enough of the stereotypes to make the test indecisive?

6 comments:

Toonhead said...

I scored an 8. Sex: female.

Toonhead said...

Better phrasing, I'm a female that scored an 8 on this test.

Joel Monka said...

I had wondered how others would do. Interesting- does that make me a stereotype, or you a non-conformist? Are the differences between individuals so much more important than the average differences as to make any such test invalid? Am I drawing too much from such a small statistical universe?

Lilylou said...

Sheesh, I got an 18, and I have always thought of myself as pretty balanced between male and female characteristics. But my ring finger is longer than my index finger, which is supposed to indicate testosterone level, for some reason. Don't ask me where I read that---it was a stumble site, I think.

Anonymous said...

I got a 16 and am female.

My inner counseling graduate student wants to come out to play - I hope no one who comes across this test takes it very seriously. All psychometric instruments require reliability and validity testing, and this article mentions nothing about that which I find rather disappointing given that it's an actual researcher who developed it and should know these things. Without this testing which shows how reliable and valid the test is (are the results consistent over time, are the items reliable within themselves, and are they actually measuring what they purport to be measuring), the results mean nothing. Not insisting that the journalist include this information (or to note that publishing the "test" is an effort to begin to acquire this information) in the article is unethical on the part of Dr. Moir...

Anonymous said...

i scored a 14? and am male. :p