Why Men Rank Higher than Women at Chess (It’s Not Biological)
January 12th, 2009
by Lisa Zyga in General Science / Other
(PhysOrg.com) — In the recorded history of chess, world champions have always been male, not female. Further, there is currently only one woman in the top 100 chess players in the world. Because chess is often considered to be the ultimate intellectual activity, male dominance at chess is often cited as an example of innate male intellectual superiority. But rather than resort to biological or cultural explanations, a recent study proposes a different explanation.
A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The authors analyzed the population of about 120,000 German players as recorded by the German chess federation in April 2007. Based on more than 3,000 tournaments per year, the German chess federation measures the skill level of all competitive and most hobby players in the country (the rating correlates highly with the widely known Elo rating). The sample population included 113,386 men and 7,013 women (a ratio of 16:1).
First, the researchers estimated the expected performance of the top 100 male and top 100 female players. Then, they compared the expected differences in points between these high-ranking male and female players with the actual point differences. Theoretically, the size difference between the male and female groups should correspond to the point differences between the top performers in the two groups.
The results showed that the top three women had more points than expected, the next 70 or so pairs showed a small advantage for the men, and the last 20 pairs showed a small advantage for the women. Overall, men performed slightly better than expected, with an average advantage of 353 points, whereas the expected advantage was 341 points. Nevertheless, about 96% of the actual difference between genders could be explained by the statistical fact that the extreme values from a large sample are likely to be larger than those from a small one.
In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women participate in chess at all. While it’s possible that there exists a self-selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial assumption, the researchers say. That is, it requires that there is an innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated with chess – an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support it.
Whether or not statistical sampling covers all the bases of explaining male superiority in chess, the researchers hope that the explanation will be considered by both experts and laypeople. In previous discussions of gender difference, there is often no mention of participation rates, although a wide range of other reasons receive attention (e.g. different interests and gatekeeper effects, etc.).
In addition, the researchers question whether a statistical sampling explanation might explain the predominance of men at the top of science and engineering fields – although performance in these activities is much more difficult to measure than in objectively ranked chess populations.
More information: Bilalic, Merim; Smallbone, Kieran; McLeod, Peter; and Gobet, Fernand. “Why are (the best) women so good at chess? Participation rates and gender differences in intellectual domains.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1576.
Source: http://www.physorg.com
Ojos de Ratons!
There are certainly biological differences in predilection, and men LIKE to play chess. Women don’t. If as many women worked as hard at chess as do the men, the gender differences in performance would be neglible.
why a lot more less women play chess than their male counterparts ?
Which is easily explained by a biological difference, but for some reason that is considered controversial.
Essentially, they just said what we already know in some beautiful language. Reminds me of a well-known joke about the difference between the explanations of a PhD student, a Masters’ one and an undergraduate for the same phenomenon. This, of course, doesn’t come close to explaining why so few women play chess, which means their study is completely superfluous. I don’t think women are less intelligent than men, but is it that much of a drama to suppose (even if it may be untrue) that there MAY be some biological difference? Of course, it wouldn’t mean that a woman can’t learn and play chess at a really high level, only that fewer women are willing to do it.
Bruno
And by the way, reading the title of the post, it’s clear that Susan completely misinterpreted the meaning of the article. It doesn’t say anywhere that different levels of interest aren’t biological. it only says that given a larger group, statistics says that the best elements will be better than the ones of a smaller group. This means that women are not less intelligent than men, but it doesn’t mean that they have the same inclination to play chess, and it doesn’t mean that this difference in inclination couldn’t be biological.
Which, by the way, goes in the same sense of what GM Aronian defended in a recent interview. He didn’t say women were stupid. He only said that they seemed to have a lesser drive for the game. This affirmation cannot be proved, but it cannot be disproven either, and this has nothing to do with misoginy.
Bruno
Bruno
The differences between the male and female brain are considerable (and there is nothing with that):
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926651.600-brains-apart-the-real-difference-between-the-sexes.html
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/12/17/sex.difference.spatial.skill.test.linked.brain.structure
(and there is nothing wrong with that) even
About why more young boys practice chess than young girls , i think we must not forget that chess is IMHO an aggressive game behind apparences
In chess , two minds are in opposition , you need to defeat your opponent’s ideas and mate him by any means on the board , it’s a game that requires quite some willpower and desire to win (or become stronger at it ) to achieve a certain level at first even if you love the game . At master level , you need a lot energy and aggressivity (directed at yourself possibly ) in order to work hard on your chess regularly and play many events , and it’s probable that more men can meet this requirement than women also , although maybe i’m wrong , just speculation
I love them womens!