Something a little different for the weekend, although I promise that our EQSQ personality tests do come into it, at least peripherally. It seems that New York City is being sued because it doesn’t have any bridge painters who are female. Now we, informed as we are by our knowledge of the personality tests and thus the sex skewed distribution of personality traits, don’t think that an imbalance in the number of men or women doing a specific job is very surprising. More male mathematicians, more female nurses, this is an outcome of our theory, not something that astonishes us.

Bridge painting probably doesn’t appeal to the empathic side of human nature, so we wouldn’t be terribly upset if there were fewer women than men. However, our personality tests also show that some women (some 17% we think) do indeed have the male brain type, and if bridge painting really is a male brain activity then we’d expect there to be at least some women.

The suit points out that there are in fact no female bridge painters, something that would surprise us. However, we can also go a little further. In the last decade only 13 painters have been hired and for those hirings, only 59 had applied. So each applicant (assuming all were equally qualified) had a 23% chance of being hired. Only three of those applicants were women.

So there’s actually a reasonably high probability (certainly enough for “reasonable doubt”) that there is in fact no discrimination here, it’s purely a function of chance. I’m no expert in American law but it seems a little harsh to punish the City for something that could be just such a random by product of the universe, rather than any deliberate wrongdoing.

John Tierney in his New York Times blog asks that question and no one seems to have come up with a good answer yet. Research clearly shows that there is a difference, with women speakers laughing more as they speak than men do, and women audiences laughing more than male. But why?

I’m wondering whether this is something our EQSQ personality tests can be used to explain or whether it’s purely a matter of cultural conditioning? Laughter, after all, is often a product of nervousness and might women simply be more nervous when speaking in public?

Alternatively, looking at our personality tests, is there something about the female brain (which, yes, as we know is not the same as saying female by gender) which predisposes people to laughter? There might indeed be actually, as explained in the third comment. Given that the female brain provides a great deal more empathy (it’s pretty much our definition that it does) could it be that women both as speakers and as listeners are more in tune with the responses of those around them?

The way to tell of course would be to conduct a controlled experiment. Take those women we know to be male brain types and see whether they display a typically male or typically female reaction in this situation.

So, anyone know where I go to apply for a research grant? Bueller?

Statisticians are those who play with the numbers to find out what’s actually happening. Sounds like an odd thing to do but that really is it. We can collect all sorts of numbers about pretty much anything. But we need to go through a series of tests to find out whether they are in fact meaningful: that’s called passing a statistical significance test. This is the sort of thing that statisticians do for their living. Collect the numbers about whatever it is that is of interest, then process them to see what they say, then test them to see whether what is being said is significant, or just a product of random noise or chance. As such it’s a branch of mathematics really, and I think you can see pretty clearly that by the standards of our EQSQ personality tests this is really a job or career for the male brain types, the systemizers.
While there are a few job openings for those with just the one college degree, a Batchelor’s, there aren’t that many. It almost always requires a further college degree to even get hired, let alone move on up the career ladder to more interesting or more important jobs. Most of those entry level jobs, the ones requiring only the one degree, are with the Federal Government.

So is all that training worth it, if you’ve got the right type of systemizing mind? Could be, it’s your choice of course, but the BLS tells us that entry level salaries are a little over $43,000 and the average is some $59,000. That’s worth a college degree or two, don’t you think?

An excellent little blog post at Chris Dillow’s shows up one of the ways in which our EQSQ personality tests relate to the real world. We’re finding, when we go looking in other places, that the personality tests’ division (or rather placing upon a spectrum) of people into male brain and female brain types has a number of real world confirmations. We’re not just dealing in airy theory here.

This particular case is in the way that people invest in stocks. It has been shown that women tend to do better at this than men and there are a couple of possible explanations. One would be that women simply buy and sell less often than men and so do better: one of the major reasons why people lose money in stock markets is because of the costs of trading, of the actual buying and selling. However, women tend to do better than men before those costs as well. What actually seems to be the correct conclusion is that it is precisely the attributes of the female brain type that make women, on average, better at this. The systemizers look at markets as if they are indeed a system, a rational entity that reacts to news and information in a predictable manner. That may well not be true, markets could be much more emotional than that, swayed by the way in which others are thinking, rather than changes in reality itself. Thus the empathic qualities of the female brain do better.

What really emphasises this finding is that it is people who are psychologically female, whatever their sex, who do better at investing. It really is the female type brain at work, another real world verification of the findings of our personality tests.

No, these are not simply engineers who stand still: rather more is required of them than that. Actually, this is the job that my son in law has just taken at the new Wembley Stadium in London, England. Rather than the sort of engineers we normally think of, who build or repair things, stationary engineers are those who actually run things once they’ve been built. Things like heating and cooling systems for example (which is exactly what the s-in-l is doing for one of the largest stadiums in the world).

Training, as indeed his was, is not through any sort of college degree, rather through either a formal apprenticeship or simply by learning on the job. Usually the minimum requirement to enter is a high school diploma so no college degree at all is required. However, it is becoming more usual to add some college classes, perhaps at a community college or vocational or technical school to supplement the educational process.

As to our EQSQ personality tests, what do you think is the personality type best suited to this career? I think I would have to plump for the male brain type here. There’s a lot of monitoring of systems, attention to detail involved and these are, as we know, systemizing traits.

This is also a very good description of the son in law’s own character and personality type, so we seem to have got at least two members of the family into just the right sort of jobs to suit their brain types (the other being myself, for as I have no discernible brain type being an economist suits me perfectly).

Or as they are often called, speech therapists, are those who help those to either gain or regain the powers of comprehensible speech. The lack of this can come from one of many reasons: injury, stroke, mental retardation or other disability or, one of the largest reasons, deafness. Such therapists might work in a clinical or school setting, dependent upon specialty, helping those who have one or more of these problems to speak properly. The actual problems themselves can range from the seemingly trivial (a particularly harsh voice, where this might be more akin to elocution lessons) to those who find it extraordinarily difficult to use or process spoken language at all.

While there are different licencing options in different states a college degree is always required for a position as a speech therapist. Indeed, it’s a higher level college degree as well, a Master’s. There are some 239 colleges and universities which offer the relevant college degree at Master’s level in speech pathology.

As to our EQSQ personality tests there is a certain amount of systemizing necessary. After all, unless you can work out what the specific problem is, classify it as to its cause, then the correct treatment cannot be described. However, the work itself can be emotionally draining and the pressures from the emotional needs of both the patients and their families can be intense. It’s therefore probably a career for those with the empathic qualites more than the systemizing, for the female brain types among us.

An interesting piece in the London Times about the different ways in which men and women make friends (or don’t, as the case may be). It won’t be all that much of a surprise to those who know the results of our EQSQ personality tests to find that while there is something in this, it isn’t as clear cut as the paper seems to think.

The essential finding of the researchers being reported upon is that women tend to make very deep friendships, where there is a strong emotional attachment. The relationship is about the relationship itself, rather than anything else that can be gained from its existence. Men, on the other hand, are much more casual about friendships, picking them up and putting them down almost carelessly. There’s also a definite whiff of such relationships being motivated by what can be got out of it (whether simply a pleasant companion for a drink or something more weighty) than valuing friendship for its own sake.

Where this interacts with our personality tests is that we know, as they seem not to, that ascribing such emotional differences to “men” or “women” is incorrect, we’re losing the factual details in the averages. For this might well be true on average, but by using the idea behind the personality tests (that there are “male brain” and “female” types, not necessarily the same as male and female) we would actually say that those making the deep emotional bonds are the female brain types. Those more casual, the systemizing or male brain types. And further, that some 17% of either side will have the brain type of the other sex.

A much better formulation would be to use those results of the personality tests and the brain types, rather than simply labelling people as male or female.

Working out where social workers come from in respect of our EQSQ personality tests should not be difficult. Social work is all about helping people, whether they be those with temporary difficulties or with more permanent ones, self inflicted (perhaps substance abuse) or simply the vagaries of fate (children who need to be cared for away from their families, for example). So it is very much one of the caring professions, similar in many ways to nursing, and thus both those attracted to it and good at it are those with the female brain or empathic characters.

It’s also true that, as so often in our society, for a highly trained profession it’s not terribly well paid. That may seem unfair but it’s very common, that those attracted to a career because of the opportunities to help and aid others don’t get a great deal of money. Satisfaction in other ways perhaps though.

As a general rule a college degree is required for even the entry level positions as a social worker. Usually this college degree is in social work itself, although there are some who enter the field with a degree in psychology say, or sociology. To advance to more senior positions, or to work at larger facilities, will almost always require a further college degree, a Master’s in social work. Average wages after all this training are around $34,000. As I say, the job is rewarding in other ways.

Sadly, no, social scientists are not those who study how to be social, rather, they are the scientists who study society. There are a number of different specialties within social science itself such as sociology, history, anthropology and so on, including some we’ve discussed elsewhere, like economics. But the essential point of all of these sciences is to try and understand that most complex of creatures, the human beings, and the societies created. To do this requires good knowledge of both the subject itself and also of statistics: for it is always important to be able to work out whether a finding is in fact important or not, is it a “real” finding or is it merely a product of chance working upon the sample?

These professions require the highest educational achievements of any: a simple college degree is only enough to get to the first stage, working possibly as an assistant. A further college degree, a Master’s, might get a teaching job in a community college, or in some private sector jobs, but for all of the real jobs a third college degree is necessary, a Ph.D. That’s a minimum 7 year investment before you can even start climbing the tree to a professorship. However, while not noticeably well paid for such a clutch of college degrees ($50-$60,000 a year), it does indeed suit those that do it. For they tend to be motivated by the opportunity to do research, to think, rather than by money.

As to our EQSQ personality tests, this is one of those jobs where anyone from the empathizer to the systemizer can join in. For within the “social sciences” there are places for everyone. We might put the economists at one end, the systemizers or male brain types, and the anthropologists at the other, the female brain or empathizing type.

An excellent little piece in today’s Washington Post that helps to illuminate something about our EQSQ personality tests. Essentially, the story confirms one of the stereotypes about the differences between men and women. The point of our personality tests being rather to show that while such stereotypes do have a grounding in reality, there’s a better explanation, one more detailed and nuanced.
It’s a cheering tale of seeing of seeing a rolling ball clock at Logan Airport and then remembering that smaller versions used to be made. They’re absurd items really, noisy and complicated, but they do hold an attraction for the little boys that still reside in the hearts of all men. In the process of buying one the author finds he needs to get it repaired and then talks to the only expert in the country on these strange items. All of the man’s enquiries come from men he says: well, the occasional woman but they are always asking for something for the men in their lives. So it’s very much a male obsession then.

However, and here’s where such things link to our personality tests. Such delight in mechanical items is indeed something we associate with the male brain: yet not all men have said male brain and most certainly some women do. About 17% either way our results seem to indicate. Which leaves us with a little puzzle. Why aren’t 17% of his customers female? Or, perhaps they are and the story about for the men in their lives is just that, a story?