Cognitive gender differences: Where are they, and why are they there?

Research on male-female differences in cognitive abilities generally focuses on one of two main concerns: (a) the existence of gender differences, or (b) their causes. The former research-often meta-analyses (e.g., Hyde & Linn 1986)or examinations of archival norms of standardized tests (e.g., Feingold 1988; Stanley, et al. 1991)-stresses methodological issues, especially effect sizes of gender differences and moderators of effect size. The key question is, ''Where are the gender differences?'' The articles by Halpern and Wright (1996) and Stumpf (1995) exemplify this line of work. The latter research takes the findings from the former as a given, and offers a theoretical framework-which generally has a nature or nurture orientation-that addresses the question, ''Why are the gender differences there?'' Most of the target articles are concerned mainly with causality, with Baenninger and Newcombe (1995) and Crawford, Chaffin, and Fitton (1995) emphasizing sociocultural explanations, and Berenbaum, Norman, and Leveroni (1995), Geary (1995), and McKeever (1995) emphasizing biological hypotheses.