The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5
Various
Periodicals
But I am not at the end of my story. I also made exactly the same
experiments 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
favor 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 anxious only 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
that the men had brought forward. Everything agreed exactly with the
experiments of 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 forty-five per cent.
correct judgments, as against the fifty-two 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 two per cent.
more, with the women five 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
fifty-two per cent. to seventy-eight per cent.; with the women the
increase is not a single per cent. The first votes were forty-five per
cent. right, and the last votes were forty-five 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