This post was inspired something on the science subreddit linked to this article post in nature. I wasn't out searching for anything RP but once you're accustomed to RP philosophy it shows up everywhere.

 

Summary: They started to nurture intellectually gifted children in the late 60's and built a program dedicated to tracking these "whiz kids" throughout their life to see where they ended up. When the most recent follow up study was done in 2013, a very apparent dichotomy appeared between males and females. In general, males appeared more dedicated to contributing to society, working hard and living in a meritocracy while females preferred as little work hours as possible, time to socialize and a provider society. Even the most intelligent women would rather game the system.

 

There have been many studies trying to predict what children are going to contribute most to society, becoming the future leaders, scientists, businessmen and lawmakers of the world. Not many have been successful (look at the Terman Study which didn't provide very reliable markers for intelligence). The hardest part is finding the best metric to measure success. Is it mathematical intelligence? Social intelligence? Literacy? Physical prowess? Obviously there is no one size fits all approach to measure success or predict it. Joe Stanley came pretty close though.

 

THE PROGRAM

Joseph Stanley started using the SAT to filter out his gifted students for his study and focused heavily on success in STEM fields. Stanley credits this to the ability of the SAT to test spatial relationships between objects and ideas as the key to its predictive ability. He believed that this was the major predictor of innovative talent and being that we spend our lives comparing our perceived reality to that which we can imagine I can see why he might be right. He called his program the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). The SAT seemed to be an accurate enough predictor of success in STEM fields. They admitted kids to the program and followed up with them throughout their careers and lives. Now most of these men and women are around age 40-50 and have reached the peak of their careers.

 

THE RESULTS

The distribution of employment fields leaves little up to speculation. Men orient themselves towards high wage and prestige positions (CEOs/STEM/IT) while women are oriented more towards social sciences (education/homemaking). The gender divide was most evenly distributed among physicians, lawyers, and consultants but this was a smaller percentage of the group. The divide may be explained by fact that women naturally pursue more socially oriented jobs while men pursue more object/subject matter oriented jobs which, in the end, tend to be higher paying. It also appears that men are still always the breadwinners in the relationship.

Next the study directors asked personality questions and compared the answers across genders. The more male traits produced bars to the right and the more female traits produced bars to the left. The real fun begins when we get into a woman's willingness to work. Men are more willing to work for their ideal job over 40 hours a week. Remember we are talking about extremely intelligent people supposedly at the spearhead of progressing society. When we break down their personal motivation for career paths we see some stark differences: Men pursue a challenging, prestigious, highly paid job in a meritocracy while women focus on working low hours and having friendly coworkers. This may explain why men pursued more challenging and high paying jobs than women.

And finally I have saved the BEST for last: personal beliefs and mannerisms compared across genders. Men have stronger opinions about their worth and their contribution to society that isn't hindered by emotional or physical stress. Meanwhile women have a view that resources should be shared and society has a responsibility to take care of its own. I do not know if this difference in attitude for women is purely philanthropic or if it is a means to help themselves.

 

LESSONS LEARNED

Intelligence can't separate us from our primal instincts as men and women. Men are willing to work hard for prestige and power while women prefer to live in a society that protects and provides for them with little work. I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule but I was surprised at how apparent it was in those who are supposed to be of top intelligence. I'm also curious if these trends will continue into the future as these are adults from the boomer generation. There is a lot we can still ask of the data this is just a interesting peek into the looking glass.

Keep grinding and keep this world turning boys. The future is in our hardworking fists.

 

 

Journal article cited from is "Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later". Links to their published articles can be found here