My experience has been that female students are simply more likely to
follow the advice given them by professors. Prof says read the book, read my
online lecture notes, and do all the practice assignments at the end of the
chapter, they do it. The guys think "Screw you, what is in it for me?" Maybe,
if they find the material interesting or have been convinced that it will be
useful for getting a job or other desired goal, they will do it -- otherwise
not.
Years ago I was involved in trying to find predictors of who would fail
in physics classes required for science majors. To our great surprise, all of
our predictors were significantly related to the class performance of the
female students, none was for the male students.
McCammon, S., Golden, J., & Wuensch, K. L. (1988). Predicting course
performance in freshman and sophomore physics courses: Women are more
predictable than men. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 25, 501-510.
Cheers,
Karl W.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Steele [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 8:25 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] 2 x 2 contingency table du jour
Jim Clark wrote:
>
> B. Two interesting questions implied by Ken's data, given significant effects
> shown above.
>
> B1. Why aren't males more motivated to complete such assignments?
>
I would like to follow up on this question. The course is
Learning and the assignment follows up on a (longish) digression
on what happens after Watson leaves Hopkins and ends up with the
J. Walter Thompson agency. The history/causality is murky here
but Watson pushes for a strategy that involves an appeal to the
emotions and a connection of the object to be sold to that
emotional state, very similar to Watson and Rayner (1920). (This,
of course, is a selling strategy of interest only to historians
and antiquarians.)
I analyze an ad (Ivory Soap, of course) to show its construction.
My point here is to illustrate that this assignment is considered
"fun" by both men and women, and my assignment of credit is
very lenient.
So I consider Jim's question of why males don't complete such
assignments at the same percentage as women to be a an
interesting question.
Ken
PS - The most interesting of the ad analyses I got this year was
from a student who looked at French-magazine ads. She was
looking at anti-AIDS ads. She pointed out that sex is usually
used to entice people to some product. In the case of AIDS, you
are trying to point out that sexual intercourse could be deadly.
The ad shows a male having missionary-position intercourse with
a giant scorpion. The scorpions stinger rises between the man's
leg and is aimed toward's his back.
---
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