Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities

Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities (ISBN 9780805827927) is a book by Diane Halpern published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates in 2000, and now in its fourth edition.

At the time [I started writing this book], it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts, and mistakes in the research. After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles, I changed my mind.

Halpern writes that gender differences in cognitive abilities can be caused by a "stereotype threat", defined as "the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype associated with one’s group membership, which paradoxically results in the individual behaving in line with the stereotype". If an individual is made aware of a stereotype then “the activation of stereotypes might explain why the magnitude of sex differences in sex-sensitive cognitive task varies across studies, depending on whether participants gender-stereotypes are activated or not”.