Are boys really better at math than girls? Nah, that doesn’t add up.
That’s according to new research out of Carnegie Mellon University. Neuroscientists looked at young boys’ and girls’ brains, and found no difference in mathematical ability or brain function.
Their new paper, published in the journal Science of Learning, suggests that society — not talent — is to blame for the stereotype that girls suck at numbers.
“Socialization can exacerbate small differences between boys and girls,” says study co-author Jessica Cantlon, a professor and neuroscientist at the university, in a statement. She thinks adults’ preconceived notions of kids’ math abilities “can snowball into how we treat them in science and math.”
In the study, Cantlon and her colleagues used an MRI machine to examine 105 kids’ brains while they watched an educational video. They found that the kids’ brains were equally engaged, processed the information the same way and showed no major disparities.
This report builds on a previous analysis from Cantlon and her team, which looked at test performance data of 500 boys and girls. The 2018 paper found no difference in their early quantitative or mathematical ability, suggesting that boys and girls are equally equipped to reason about mathematics during early childhood.
All of this info makes Cantlon think that naysayers and crappy cultural messaging are to blame for the huge gender divide in STEM fields later in life.
“We need to be cognizant of these origins to ensure we aren’t the ones causing the gender inequities,” she says.
The takeaway she’s hoping for? That people will stop being so damn sexist about little girls and calculators.
“Hopefully we can recalibrate expectations of what children can achieve in mathematics,” she says.