COGNITIVE GENDER

DIFFERENCES: WHERE ARE

THEY, AND WHY
ARE THEY THERE?
ALAN FEINGOLD
YALEUNIVERSITY

Research on male-female differences in cognitive abilities generally focuses on one

of two main concerns: (a) the existence of gender differences, or (b) their causes. The
former research-often meta-analyses (e.g., Hyde & Linn 1986) or examinations of
archival norms of standardized tests (e.g., Feingold 1988; Stanley, et al. 1991)-
stresses methodological issues, especially effect sizes of gender differences and
moderators of effect size. The key question is, “Where are the gender differences?“
The articles by Halpern and Wright (1996) and Stumpf (1995) exemplify this line of
work.
The latter research takes the findings from the former as a given, and offers a
theoretical framework-which generally has a nature or nurture orientation-
that addresses the question, “Why are the gender differences there?” Most of the
target articles are concerned mainly with causality, with Baenninger and New-
combe (1995) and Crawford, Chaffin, and Fitton (1995) emphasizing sociocultural
explanations, and Berenbaum, Norman, and Leveroni (19951, Geary (1995), and
McKeever (1995) emphasizing biological hypotheses.

WHERE ARE THE GENDER DIFFERENCES?

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
Halpem and Wright (1996) argue, as do Feingold (e.g., Feingold 1993) and
Geary (1995), against referring to gender differences in verbal, quantitative, and

Direct allcorrespondence lo: Alan Feingold, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, 34 Park St., New Haven, CT 06519
Learning and Individual Differences, Volume 8, Number 1, 1996, pages 25-32. Copyright 0 1996 by JAI Press Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved, ISSN: 1041-6065