But I am not at the end of my story. I made exactly the same
experiments also with a class of advanced female university students.
When I started, my aim was not to examine the differences of men and
women, but only to have ampler material, and I confined my work to
students in psychological classes, because I was anxious to get the
best possible scientific analysis of the inner experiences. I had no
prejudice in favour of or against women as members of the jury, any
more than my experiments were guided by a desire to defend or to
attack the jury system. I was only anxious to clear up the facts. The
women students had exactly the same opportunities for seeing the
cards and the votes and for exchanging opinions. The discussions,
while carried on for the same length of time, were on the whole less
animated. There was less desire to convince and more restraint, but
the record, which was taken in shorthand, showed nearly the same
variety of arguments which the men had brought forward. Everything
agreed exactly with the experiments with the men, and the only
difference was in the results. The first vote of all experiments with
the women showed a slightly smaller number of right judgments. The
women had 45 per cent. correct judgments, as against the 52 per cent.
of the men. I should not put any emphasis on this difference. It may
be said that the men had more training in scientific observations and
the task was therefore slightly easier for them than for most of the
women. I should say that, all taken together, men and women showed an
equal ability in immediate judgment, as with both groups about half of
the first judgments were correct. The fact that with the men 2 per
cent. more, with the women 5 per cent. less, than half were right
would not mean much. But the situation is entirely different with the
second figure. We saw that for the men the discussion secured an
increase from 52 per cent. to 78 per cent.; with the women the
increase is not a single per cent. The first votes were 45 per cent.
right, and the last votes were 45 per cent. right. In other words,
they had not learned anything from discussion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account