2009-12-10
The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. When entering the items ‘women’ and ‘parking’ in one of the biggest search engines of the World Wide Web, more than 80.000.000 results are obtained. As parking is a complex, spatial task, and a large body of literature proves the existence of sex differences in spatial cognition in favour of men, it is possible that the prejudice addressing women’s poor parking skills has a scientific background. To test this possibility, we investigated parking performance of 17 driving beginners and 48 more experienced drivers in an area of a car park that was closed off for the public. Subjects conducted three different types of manoeuvres (forward, backward, parallel), which were analysed for speed and accuracy. We found that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. On average, males were 42 seconds faster and 3 % more accurate than women. Although overall performance was better in experienced drivers, the sex difference remained. Performance was related to spatial skills and self-assessment in driving beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. As male subjects outperformed females in the mental rotation test for spatial skills and achieved higher scores in the self-assessment questionnaire, we assume that the sex difference in parking is due to these two variables. We assume that – due to differential feedback – self-assessment incrementally replaces the controlling influence of spatial skills, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Additionally, the prevalence of the prejudice about women’s parking skills could constitute a stereotype threat that additionally decreases women’s performance. Our results suggest that sex differences in spatial cognition found in laboratory experiments persist in real-life situations. However, real-life spatial cognition is also influenced by socio-psychological factors, which modulate the biological causes of sex differences.
The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. When entering the items ‘women’ and ‘parking’ in one of the biggest search engines of the World Wide Web, more than 80.000.000 results are obtained. As parking is a complex, spatial task, and a large body of literature proves the existence of sex differences in spatial cognition in favour of men, it is possible that the prejudice addressing women’s poor parking skills has a scientific background. To test this possibility, we investigated parking performance of 17 driving beginners and 48 more experienced drivers in an area of a car park that was closed off for the public. Subjects conducted three different types of manoeuvres (forward, backward, parallel), which were analysed for speed and accuracy. We found that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. On average, males were 42 seconds faster and 3 % more accurate than women. Although overall performance was better in experienced drivers, the sex difference remained. Performance was related to spatial skills and self-assessment in driving beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. As male subjects outperformed females in the mental rotation test for spatial skills and achieved higher scores in the self-assessment questionnaire, we assume that the sex difference in parking is due to these two variables. We assume that – due to differential feedback – self-assessment incrementally replaces the controlling influence of spatial skills, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Additionally, the prevalence of the prejudice about women’s parking skills could constitute a stereotype threat that additionally decreases women’s performance. Our results suggest that sex differences in spatial cognition found in laboratory experiments persist in real-life situations. However, real-life spatial cognition is also influenced by socio-psychological factors, which modulate the biological causes of sex differences.
Copyright © BioPsy 2023
Last update: Oct 10, 2023
