Speaker: Diane F. Halpern

January 30, 2002

Director Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children

Understanding Cognitive Sex Differences With the Wisdom of the Hoca

The ways in which women and men are similar and different and why we have these differences is a topic that we have all thought about and argued over. Research into the many questions about sex differences and similarities in intelligence is fraught with political minefields and emotional rhetoric from all ends of the political spectrum.

Some psychologists and others are opposed to any comparisons of women and men, fearing that the findings will be misused in ways that support a misogynist agenda, or affirmative action or discrimination based on one's sex. Such fears are understandable however, Professor Halpern counters that sex is an fundamental component of everyone's identity; It is the primary way of classifying humans into groups. Does it make sense to ignore such a primary variable or pretend that it is not important? Professor Halpern synthesized a large body of research that has investigated similarities and differences in the cognitive abilities of males and females. She rejects the age-old tug-of-war between nature and nurture, replacing it with a psychobiosocial model for understanding the complex relationships between sex and cognition.

Diane F. Halpern, is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College. For the last 20 years, she was a professor in the psychology department at California State University, San Bernardino. She is the author of several books and hundreds of journal articles including: Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (4th ed. is coming soon), Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking (1996).