When it comes to finding our way, most of us probably consider that women are better at it than men are. Just the same as many of us probably consider that women are better multitaskers and even better listeners. If you consider the above to be true, the findings in one study might just blow your mind.
According to researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, it appears that men actually do have a better sense of direction than women. Wait, what?! Yep, it appears that men are better at navigating and finding their way home.
The study showed that men are better at finding their way than women, and it has nothing to do with a biological advantage. The researchers found that when it comes to the strength of a person's ability to find their way, it all comes down to the way they were raised.
Because societal norms encourage boys to play outside more, they tend to develop their navigational skills beginning at a young age. “Sex differences in behavior or performance can arise from biological or cultural processes that have little to do with evolution,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published by The Royal Society.
More from LittleThings: Women Without Husbands Or Kids Are Happier & Live Longer Than Others, According To Study
In the study, the wayfinding abilities of males and females across 21 different species — including otters, frogs, horses, and humans — were compared. The humans received their testing through either virtual reality or by navigating their way through an actual city with only a map or by only verbal instruction.
Within the testing, women tended to travel further from home than men. However, they ran into more problems than the men did.
“Males outscore females in a statistically significant way in many spatial tasks, to varying degrees, with a small to moderate meta-analytic effect size in tasks directly related to navigation,” the study noted. The results showed to be consistent across the large sample size of human participants, who came from different economic backgrounds, cultures, races, and more.
The conclusion of the study goes up against former misconceptions that men had evolved to a stronger sense of spatial awareness. Previously, researchers assumed that the navigational strength of men grew from their ancestral history as hunters, where on the other hand women stayed closer to the home.
This assumption was disproved by a smaller study done by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers in 2013. However, it didn't answer the question of why there was a difference in spatial awareness between genders. “We believe that future research on human sex differences in navigation should focus on the role of socialization and culture, rather than evolutionary genetic factors,” the researchers said at the time.
“A really obvious alternative is culture,” Justin Rhodes, one of the researcher said. “It plays a huge role in what men and women experience.”
