This is just surreal.
An interestig example: A women once told me some time ago that she prefers to work with men instead of women. She gave me as an excuse that women tend to be very competitive among each other at work and also tend to be more subtly manipulative among them when needs be.
I thought that this was an interesting and rather surprising comment so I have asked this question to many other women and they have ALL confirmed the same, that they prefer to work with men.
This observation leads me to believe that there are indeed some differences between men and women at the work place, otherwise these women wouldn't have chosen men as their prefered gender to work with.
(Note that I am not stating any conclusions nor trying to find any causes such as e.g. nature vs. nurtures. It is just a pure observation, nothing more.)
Additionally, I have no reason to be biased since it was a simple comment that I once heard and simply wanted to know whether it was an isolated case or a common pattern. I have to say that the results surprised me and didn't expect such unanimity.
Of course, according to your confirmation bias theory, my observations are completely wrong.
Yes. And you have every reason in the book to be biased. Note that a bias creates an illusion of reality that appears surreal when broken. Empirical research in psychology sometimes yield counter-intuitive results and there's little so satisfying in psychology as proving "intuition" wrong.
First, you allowed a woman to define womanhood. That in itself is problematic. If I say "
real men dare to wear purple regardless what others think" I make a statement about men that are inaccurate since many men clearly do not fit that description. But the mere fact that I am a "man" do not allow me to speak for "men" more than me being "white" allow me to speak for "whites", being "blonde" allow me to speak for "blondes" and wearing glasses allow me to speak for other who wear glasses. The trait may for some be social markers but one should always be careful to not confuse an individuals opinions about a group with the group itself.
Unfortunately people who already have rigid ideas about groups gladly use individual examples to speak about groups, which is a foundation for things like racism; "hey look at this nigger doing a robbery in a liquor store, niggers are robbers I tell you". Visual markers are especially powerful at forming cognitive categories in our heads, which makes racism and sexism intuitive. We simply assume that there's categories of people because they have a strong visual differences. Strong categories automatically form assumptions about differences in things that are not within the visual difference at all. We simply assume that if there are visual differences, there are differences in personality, intelligence and other factors as well.
This is why we as a society have to actively fight racism and sexism in every generation because we intuitively build false assumptions about categories.
If you wish to learn more, there are a lot of studies conducted on the
accentuation-effect, which also plays a strong role in
social-identity theory (Henri Tajfel).
Second you conducted your own research in a way that sounds like no attempts were made to improve your
validity and
reliability when doing so. First you do not seem to have used a coherent/rigid model in your research and that's a mess. You need to go great length at avoiding
confounding variables. You need a quantified diverse population. You need to be careful about registering every test, otherwise your brain will forget the misses and adjust the data based on your assumptions rather than the other way around. You must also consistently try to falsify your hypothesis rather than conform to it.
I am not claiming that the science in question is wrong per se but due to its very nature it shouldn't be treated as undispited fact by default yet you have the tendency to use it as a source for absolute truth which you use to automatically dismiss other people's viewpoints.
Peer-reviewed research does have stronger weight than your assumptions, it have stronger weight because such research have gone great length at being valid and reliable and survived attempts to poke hole in it's structure.
Assuming research might be wrong doesn't equal refuting the research. You are free to conduct your own research, get your article peer reviewed and published but when you simply suggest "research might be wrong" you are doing something else.
Some people just want to have opinions but do not have the time or energy to support them in the often rigid, timeconsuming and exhausting practice of doing scientific research. So they make up excuses that their opinions may still be valid and the research is wrong and suddenly they feel as if their opinions are just as valid as the research. Kinda like a sandcastle on the beach is as solid as a skyscraper.
I find it ironic that you use the term "extremism", especially after your "yes" in large bold red letters.
It was an absolute statement, but not extreme. Sometimes academics gets flack for being too vague and open on topics that are covered with a large quantity of data. It's part of the ethics to be openminded, but our culture doesn't work like that. So sometimes it's better to say "yes" than "it depends...".
I just didn't have the time to write what I now did above. There's no time to go into detail on how precisely cognitive functions about groups are constructed, identity theory, metacontrast and the research to support it within a forum post. You can spend a day on each of these and only scraped the surface, I have spent years and I still learn new stuff.
In a few hours, I am going for a few days to Viena on holidays and won't be accessing the internet. So let's just quit and stop here.
k.