These Results Are Gay - BBC Brain Sex Test
I became inspired for the moment from steakumms when I answered this brain sex test.
My results are as follows:
Part 1a: Angles
This task tested your ability to identify the angle of a line by matching it with its twin. This is a spatial task, which looks at how you picture space.
Your score: 10 out of 20
Average score for men: 15.1 out of 20
Average score for women: 13.3 out of 20
What does your result suggest?
If you scored 0 - 12: You have more of a female brain. Scientists believe that people with a female brain find it more difficult to judge the slope of a line because they're not wired for spatial tasks. In past studies, 65 per cent of people who scored in this range were women.
If you scored 13 - 17: You found this test neither hard nor easy. This suggests your brain has male and female traits when it comes to spatial ability.
If you scored 18 - 20: You have more of a male brain. On average, men outperform women in this task and those with more mathematical knowledge tend to score quite high as well. In past studies, 60 per cent of the people in this range were men.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Interestingly, men's testosterone levels fluctuate through the seasons and studies have shown that men's scores are lower in the spring, when their testosterone levels are at their lowest.
My response to Part 1a: Goddamn, those angles were rough. I've taken this exam more than once. One time, I was interrupted during the test and clicked the wrong link and somehow erased all of my results. I fudged directions on a couple of later parts, and I wanted a more indicative cumulative result with following the directions to perfection. Of the four times I took this part, 10 was my best number. 4, 6, and 7 were other results for Part 1. I'm really a functional retard at this angles game. I fail to grasp the angles, no matter to how much I focus.
Part 1b: Spot the Difference
This task tested your ability to identify which objects changed position. You lost points, if you incorrectly identified objects.
Your score: 64%
Average score for men: 39%
Average score for women: 46%
What does your score suggest?
If you scored between 0 - 33%: You may have more of a male brain. Scientists say men tend to under perform in this task. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the right and left hemispheres, is a fifth larger in women. This means women can process visual and other signals at the same time more easily than men. There is also a theory that oestrogen levels in women give them an added advantage in spatial memory.
If you scored between 34 - 66%: You may have a balanced female-male brain.
If you scored between 67 - 100%: Those with a female-type brain generally score in this range. Your ability to remember where objects are may serve as an advantage to you when you're trying to find your way around places. You're more capable of recalling landmarks to get from one place to another.
My response to Part 1b: I like "one of these things is not like the others" games. This one didn't really change. I realized at one point that I could do better at this part if I kept taking it because the picture was exactly the same each time. However, I knew I could do better because I wasn't a functional retard at this the first time I tried it. So, I pretty much waited a while to retake this one, and 64 percent's about what I got last time. I never scored below 33 percent.
Part 2: Hands
You said your left thumb was on top when you clasped your hands together.
Right thumb on top: This suggests the left half of your brain is dominant. Many studies have tried to establish whether there is a relationship between handedness and brain dominance. Some scientists believe that if you are left brain dominant, you would be more verbal and analytical.
Left thumb on top: This suggests the right half of your brain is dominant. Some studies theorise that as a right brain dominant person, you may excel in visual, spatial and intuitive processes.
Additional off-the-cuff info: However, these theories are debatable and leave much to be said about the small percentage of people who are ambidextrous.
Right-brained people may be better fighters and artists.
My response to Part 2: That totally makes sense, the designation of right-brain. I've taken other tests, and right-brain has been the designation. For this test, I just went with my initial response over and over to get to the next section, on the retakes. I'll cut ya, and then I'll paint a picture of cuttin' ya!
Part 3a: Emotions and Systems
This task looked at whether you prefer to empathise or systemise.
Empathising
Your empathy score is: 7 out of 20
Average score for men: 7.9 out of 20
Average score for women: 10.6 out of 20
What does your result suggest?
Empathisers are better at accurately judging other people's emotions and responding appropriately. If you scored 15 and above, you are very empathic and would be an ideal person to comfort people in a time of crisis. Women in general are better at empathising.
Systemising
Your systemising score is: 17 out of 20
Average score for men: 12.5 out of 20
Average score for women: 8.0 out of 20
What does your result suggest?
Systemisers prefer to investigate how systems work. A system can be a road map, flat pack furniture, or a mathematical equation - anything that follows a set of rules. A score of 15 and above suggests you're good at analysing or building systems. Men in general are better at systemising.
Scientists are keen to learn more about people who score high or low on both tests. They want to find out whether or not empathising and systemising are linked. Is a possible to make yourself more empathic?
My response to Part 3a: Apparently, I don't give two shits about your problems. Although, I am aware, more often than not, of what's goin' on with you. You'll find out about that later in Part 3b. Regardless, I don't buy my ability to empathize as poor, as demonstrated later by 3b. I do buy my ability to systematically not give a shit about empathy and sympathy.
Part 3b: Eyes
This task tested your ability to judge people's emotions.
Your score: 10 out of 10
Average score for men: 6.6 out of 10
Average score for women: 6.6 out of 10
What does your result suggest?
If you scored 0 - 3: Do you think you're good at judging how another person is feeling? Your score suggests this doesn't come to you quite so naturally.
If you scored 4 - 6: Your result suggests you have a balanced female-male brain and find it neither easy nor difficult to judge people's emotions.
If you scored 7 - 10: Your result suggests you are a good empathiser, sensitive to other people's emotions. Women generally fall into this category.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Professor Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge says that people usually perform better than they expect to on this test.
Men often think a person's eyes are sending signals of desire when that's not the case at all.
My response to Part 3b (also in relation to Part 3a): Oh, I may choose to default the not-give-a-shit, but I can see right through you, you motherfuckers!
For one moment, I must defend myself. I really do care about what you write about in terms of problems. I have no trouble grasping situations-at-hand. If I do have some failure, and I sense it, I usually ask for more detail, regardless of how plain-view whatever it was happened to be presented.
Most of the time, I respond like a man would, and I offer suggestions of what I'd do if I was in your shoes, even if they were the most uncomfortable slim pointy-toe pumps with the most foot-disorder-inspiring stiletto heels imaginable.
My attention span holds strong with keen ability for minutiae, so long as someone or something does not interrupt my focus. I sometimes respond with weird suggestions, for the love of impulse and devil's advocacy.
I do make mistakes with reads, since I'm not perfect, and if someone points out a key detail or a misconception that I seem to hold, I often will own up to a mistake and/or give reason to the error in question. Apologies are almost always genuine when they come from me.
In real life, I sometimes tend to not look people in the eye when I'm conversing. This is due to two reasons.
The first reason stems from thinking and visualizing what it is I'm talking about as I discuss, so I often stare into space which you can't see what it is that I'm visualizing, but there's something there to me when I'm speaking. The other reason stems from not wanting to give you an accurate read on me while I'm speaking.
If you read any of this and guessed guilt, then you are a good empathizer, since this is my latent Catholic influence rising up in me.
Part 4: Fingers
We asked you to measure your ring and index fingers.
Your ratios came to:
Right Hand: 0.98
Left Hand: 1.02
Average ratio for men: 0.982
Average ratio for women: 0.991
It's thought that your ratio is governed by the amount of testosterone you were exposed to in your mother's womb. The ratio of the length of your index finger to the length of your ring finger is set for life by as early as three months after conception. Even during puberty, when we experience intensive hormonal changes, the ratio stays the same.
Men generally have a ring finger that is longer than their index finger, which gives them a lower ratio than women, whose ring and index fingers are usually of equal length.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Studies have found that men and women with lots of brothers generally have more masculine finger ratios.
My response to Part 4: I found that my right ring finger was 78 mm, right index was 77mm, left ring was 78 mm, left index was 80 mm. I found that this study seems to smell like bullshit, but then again, I really do seem to have a slightly-weird left index finger. So in this case, I'm half-man, half-alien.
Part 5: Faces
This task looked at how you rate the attractiveness of a series of faces. The images you looked at were digitally altered to create slight differences in masculinity.
Your choices suggest you prefer more feminine faces.
Highly masculinised male faces possess more extreme testosterone markers such as a long, broad and lower jaw, as well as more pronounced brow ridges and cheekbones.
A typical 'attractive' female face possesses features such as a shorter, narrower, lower jaw, fuller lips and larger eyes than an average face.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Interestingly, women's preferences are said to vary across the menstrual phase. A more masculine face is preferred during the 9 days prior to ovulation, when conception is most likely.
My response to Part 5: Of course I prefer feminine faces. I actually spent time as a child studying the male and female figures, including facial features, for purpose of drawing with some accuracy. I chose to ignore much of what I studied for preference of weirdly-featured men and women at times for shock value. I also once did a still-life in high school with charcoal pencil. It had a gargoyle among the props, maybe some fruit, and it basically served as an exercise to show effect of shadow. I added a severed finger to my still life because it added shock value. I did not recreate the severed finger in real life, however.
In regard to this examination, I had a feeling that the images were digitally-altered in a Photoshop-like program to enhance feminine and masculine features. The examination used the same handful of women, but the side-by-sides were always slightly altered in such a way to give me that feeling. I consciously registered when they made foreheads smaller, jaws smaller, eyes wider, and the like. I didn't personally care for the looks of the women used in the test, overall, so most of the time I threw some "slightly prefers" here and there, every once in a while using the stronger skew.
For the sex preference question that preceded the examination, I was disappointed with the choices presented for men with regard to the faces. When asked for visual preferences among heterosexual men, men prefer to look at more than just the face. Ass, titties, legs, crotch, uh, where were those? Crap, that's right, this is a BBC-hosted test, not a Hustler-host.
I don't really care how a woman looks, in sum. That's difficult for most to believe. However, I know more than most that no matter how a woman looks, if she has the in-real-life personality of a monster, that monster weighs far greater to me, with regard to loss of attractiveness, than any possible visual features. So I guess I re-qualify myself to align more like a woman, in terms of visual-bypass.
Part 6a: 3D Shapes
This task tested your ability to mentally rotate 3D shapes.
Your score: 12 out of 12
Average score for men: 8.2 out of 12
Average score for women: 7.1 out of 12
What does your result suggest?
If you scored 0 - 6: Do you find yourself having to physically rotate a map to point in the direction in which you're travelling? This might explain why you scored in the lower range in the 3D shapes test. Twice as many women as men score in this category. Previous studies suggest that those with a female-type brain or with an arts background fall into this range.
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.
If you scored 10 - 12: Are you an engineer or do you have a science background? People with these skills tend to score in this range. Past studies have concluded that people in this range have a more male brain.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Nearly a third of men who took this test got full marks, whereas less than 10 per cent of women managed the same.
My response to Part 6a: This was a part in which I didn't read the instructions correctly. The first time I answered this, I only gave one choice of accuracy to the original piece, not two. Not surprisingly, I scored 6 of 12 until I realized my error. This was one of the factors in why I did retakes of this test.
The results of 6a are of no surprise to me. I once won an engineering-ish award in grade school from a competition with a similar exam. I've always been able to rotate 3-D objects in my mind.
For those who are interested in the process I use . . . I often find some most-unique-to-me point in the shape, look for that point in the comparisons, and then use my natural power of visualization and rotation to double-check to see if I'm correct with my gut feeling. In other words, you could be a functional retard at this, and you may never get better. Don't worry, I'm still baffled by the lines and angles from Part 1a. My mind's weird. Call me 3-D Shape Rainman.
Part 6b: Words
This task looked at your verbal fluency.
Your score: You associated 11 word(s) with grey and you named 12 word(s) that mean happy. We are assuming that all the words you entered are correct.
Average score for men: 11.4 words total
Average score for women: 12.4 words total
What does your result suggest?
If you produced 1 - 5 words: You are more of the strong, silent type with a male brain. You probably find it easier to express yourself in non-verbal ways, preferring action rather than words.
If you produced 6 - 10 words: Most people in this range have a female-type brain.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Women are said to use both sides of the brain when doing verbal tasks while men mainly use their left side. Studies have shown that girls develop vocabulary faster than boys. This difference in brain power is caused by levels of pre-natal testosterone.
Did you know that, on average, women use 15,000 words a day while men use 7,000?
Women took about twice as long as men to end their online instant messenger conversations in a 2003 study of US university students. The study, which was published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, also found that women were much more likely to use emoticons (representations of emotions using punctuation marks).
The most popular emoticon was the smiley face :- )
My response to Part 6b: I find this test, based on the italicized red text that reads, "we are assuming that all the words you entered are correct," to make this test a batch of bullshit. (Oh, and :D, not :-) . . . I'm not a fan of noses in emoticons).
Never assume anything! The results they suggest, the 1-5 and 6-10, and the data averages, of course, prove that they pooch-screwed this test, to me. The men are scoring near the women. Here's what they should have done . . . come up with acceptable word associations for "gray" and "happy," and from those, allowance of just re-occurrence of such words to count toward the word total. Since, after all, women apparently use 15,000 words and men 7,000 per some weird statistic I found somewhere in this BBC jazz, if that were part of the test-formulator's reasoning, they would have found data similar to the 0-5 and 6-above style.
On the record, I screwed-the-pooch for instructions on this one, too. The 11 and 12 results I achieved were the final result. When I was under the impression that the thing counted only acceptable words, I produced 3-5 words per "gray" and "happy." So, that might suggest that I'm more male than female, seeing as it took me a while to figure out closest synonyms, but when I realized that anything flies for words, I started throwing out words like "concrete," "clothes," "hats," "tin," "steel," and the like for things that could be "gray" in color. For "happy," I spewed words like "ecstatic," "joyous," "joyful," "laughing," "glad," and the like. If I had decided to completely abuse the examination, I would have thrown out small-total-number-of-letters words and rang up 20-40 in short order.
In sum, this part of the test is garbage.
Part 6c: Ultimatum
This task asked you how you would divide money.
If you had to split £50 with someone, you said you would demand £25
So far on the Sex ID test, men have demanded 51.6% (£25.80) of the pot and women have demanded 51.0% (£25.50), on average.
What does your response suggest?
Sex differences are small in this task. Demanding less than 60% of the pot (ie £30) is more typically female. Demanding more than 65% of the pot (ie £32.50) is more typically male.
Additional off-the-cuff info: Scientists believe that people with lower testosterone levels tend to take fewer risks so they are probably more willing to keep less for themselves. Those with higher testosterone levels tend to drive a harder bargain and are less compromising.
Men's testosterone levels fluctuate over the seasons and are at their lowest levels during the springtime. This is said to influence their bargaining power.
Interestingly, this average varies across cultures: Spaniards are said to offer the least (around £13) Japanese offer the most (£22). The French have one of the highest thresholds for acceptance - they'll reject offers of £15. Germans are willing to accept £5.
My response to Part 6c: I don't know about this one. This smells like garbage.
I don't doubt the whole testosterone levels spiel that's been repeated as a by-the-way, but the whole part about demanding more or less seems more classified to personality type and influence of culture than sex. The test itself seems to split the results, and I heed you to reconsider how the question was phrased, from direct quote of the "Ultimatum" question:
Imagine you have been paired up with someone for this task. You have both been given some money to divide between you. You decide how much you want. The other person decides whether the split is acceptable.
If they say it's OK - you get the money you demanded and they get the rest. If they say it's not OK - both of you leave with nothing.
If you have been given £50 to split, how much would you demand for yourself?
My gut feelings about this question and the information provided:
1. It doesn't let you know how you felt the work was done, in terms of quantity and quality, based on what you did and what the other did. I think that if I did most of the work, and it ended up being equal or greater in quality than the other person, I don't give a damn who the other person is, I want at least 60-70 percent, no less than 30 pounds.
2. If, for some reason, it said my work wasn't as great or plentiful as the other person's, regardless of sex, I'd have asked for much less, maybe 30-40 percent. I'd have congratulated the other person for coming through big-time for our group.
3. If they're planning on using this data to explain why men are, on average, paid more than women for the same work, this has nothing to do with that. It goes back to the amount of time lost in the workplace over child-bearing and other various reasons that have nothing to do with asking for more and accepting not less than.
4. To support a better claim in a related situation, I have been paid more on average for the same job to that of others, I discovered, primarily because I held a certain level of college education. I know I've been paid more for the same work to that of others with high-school dropout, GED, or high school degree as the designation. I'm sure there have been those with master's degrees that have been paid more for the same work than I have.
5. Since the question was based as such with regard to phrasing, I figured we both did the same amount of work in quality and quantity, so far be it from me to act like I'm all that. 50-50, yo.
Anyway, yeah, I didn't much feel this question was that great. Both men and women were slightly asking for more than 25 dollars and less than 26, so in general, this doesn't seem to work how the initial studies suggested.
The final results:
On a scale of 100-Female to 100-Male, I fell 50-Female, just to the left of zero (Male-Female Balance).
Male average was 50-Male. Female average was 50-Female.
It was loads of fun, doing this thing.