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From: joe@dual.UUCP (Joe Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Interesting article
Message-ID: <1222@dual.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 14:50:02 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.1222
Posted: Thu Feb 27 14:50:02 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 16:32:41 EST
References: <489@ssc-bee.UUCP> <162@gsg.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems Corp. Berkeley, Ca.
Lines: 58
Summary: Why men are denser in that way...



	I think you have noticed something that is true statistically
	for the general population, and not just a quirk of the small
	group.  I have seen and heard about this from many quarters,
	in more than one culture*. My personal hunch is that it's
	basis may be hormonal.
		On the assumption that everyone has the same quantity
	of attention to spend, men must be paying more attention to
	something else in these situations. The women are attaching
	significance to the nuances of tone and facial expression,
	they are staying closer to the emotional flow of the meeting,
	where the men are ignoring this, to the extent that they make
	no effort to tune themselves in to the emotional flow and
	react to it only when it is overt enough to impinge on un-
	hightened senses.
		It is my belief that men, as a whole, tend to focus
	more sharply. That is to say the attention they do not spend
	on the emotional flow of the communication around them is
	all spent on the narrow task at hand.
		To the extent that the task *is* narrow, and can be well
	defined, such as in mathematics, I think this affords an edge to
	men. In areas such as politics, diplomacy and exploratory fields
	where the emotional flow is an important part of the issue, or
	where the information is anywhere in the environment, and a
	broad** sensitivity is needed, women may have an edge.
		I have seen both men and women lose because they were
	stuck in their bias ( as proposed above ). I've seen men who
	were easily toyed with by people who would randomly move the
	focus of an argument, just to frustrate the man to vessel-bursting
	levels as he trys to keep everything together in a focus.
		I have also seen women side with the wrong side of an
	issue just because it was presented in a way that seemed to
	provide an emotional "solution" to a situation, where the
	proposer "had everyone's concerns (feelings) at heart". The
	other side had been proposed in a "IF YOU DON"T JUMP INTO THE
	LIFE-BOAT WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" style of rhetoric that made
	her feel icky and scared. I've even see someone jump mindlessly
	back and forth between sides of an issue, just based on the
	tone each individual argument was presented.
		We've all seen the clasic communication failure between
	men and women, where the two biases clash unintentionally.
	The guy is "beating the gal over the head" with his logic,
	while he tries to resolve the issue piece-by-piece till he
	hopefully solves the puzzle. She "changes the focus around
	defensively and won't stick to an issue" because the "issues"
	are really only examples of her issue, which is the lack of
	communication between them, at least on the emotional level,
	because he's not being sensitve to it in the first place!
		And all that talk of edges is easily compensated either
	way by one's personal awareness. Men can make themselves sensitive
	and women can focus sharply ( narrowly ). I think they just tend
	to do one or the other a little more.

				Joseph Weinstein

* ( And noted it in myself )
** ( pun noted )