According to a new scientific study men are better than women when it comes to navigating the world. Women have always been hit with a reputation of having inferior directional skills to men, and until now that reputation has been anecdotal. Now scientists have ran tests that prove men are 50% better than women…at getting around town.
Researchers from Norway scanned the brains of volunteers as they completed navigation tasks to discover men are more adept at finding their way because they use a separate part of their brain.
Adding fuel to the fire, when women had testosterone dropped onto their tongues, their navigational skills improved.
Using 3D goggles and a joystick, a total of 36 participants – 18 men and 18 women – had to orient themselves in a large virtual maze while functional images of their brains were continuously recorded.
In the MRI scanner, they were given 30 seconds for each of the 45 navigation tasks. One of the tasks, for example, was to ‘find the yellow car’ from different starting points.
The men solved 50 per cent more of the tasks than the women.
Men use cardinal directions – the use of north, south, east and west – during navigation to a greater degree.
‘Men’s sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster,’ he said.
‘If they’re going to the Student Society building in Trondheim, for example, men usually go in the general direction where it’s located,’ Dr Pintzka explained.
‘Women usually orient themselves along a route to get there, for example, “go past the hairdresser and then up the street and turn right after the store.”‘
The study was published in the ScienceDirect journal, and it’s now given me all the fucking fuel I need to stoke the fire of me being better than any woman I’ve ever been in a car with who told me I was taking the wrong route or going the wrong direction.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read one of these studies and thought to myself ‘yup, that’s exactly me.’ I always know EXACTLY where I’m going and I just orient in the general direction of where I need to be and I end up there. The roads don’t always matter that much if I’m in a car as long as I know the destination. If I’m out hiking I just need a general idea of where I need to be and I end up there (assuming it’s off the trail). It just feels weird to read about your exact behavior described in a scientific study, but I guess it’s good I ended up on the positive side of this study and not the side that’s 50% worse…right?