Vive la Difference

A quite marvellous little piece of research is published in The Telegraph today. Not really to do with our EQSQ personality tests but an interesting example of evolutionary biology all the same. In fact I can’t, for the life of me, think of how to link it to personality tests.

What researchers have found (and yes, they are again at my alma mater) is that there is a huge preponderance of the first child being female if the parents are particularly attractive. It’s more likely by 36% which is a huge number (especially when you think that boys and girls are not born in equal numbers at all, no, it’s about 5% in favour of boys normally).

The thinking, the explanation, is that looks are of course largely inherited. Beauty increases the reproductive success of a woman more than it does that of a man. So those genes that produce good looks are more likely to produce a daughter and so on. Which all sounds terribly appealing but I have to admit that I’m not all that convinced. For in the competition to have children women are hugely advantaged over men. Most daughters go on to have grandchildren (which is what the great Darwinian race is all about) but a significant portion of men never have children while a much smaller number sire many with many women. This has been shown by research into times of food deprivation. More daughters are born at this time because they are more likely to have children than sons. (Studies show that as many as 10% of children are not sired by those who think they did.)

Hhhm. Again I’m not sure. Maybe looks do indeed work for women and it’s something else that works for those highly progenitive men? Manipulation? What do you think?

Two little reports from my my alma mater today, both of them adding to our stock of knowledge about that pesky thing, the gender pay gap. Now we know that it is actually true that women get paid less than men. On average that is, there’s very little evidence (any more, 40 years ago there was, but not now) that men and women get paid different amounts for doing exactly the same job. However, the average incomes from women are lower than they are for men.

What we’re actually interested in knowing is why? Could it be something to do with our EQSQ personality tests? We know that men are more likely to have systemizing minds (more likely, 17% do not) and that women are likely to have more empathic minds (likely, but again 17% do not) so is there some twist to the universe that makes systemizing a more highly paid trait? Or is it all really just men conspiring to do down women?

I looked at one of the reports at my other blog. Very shortly, the assumption (well founded in the numbers) is that some 50% of the pay gap comes from women taking career breaks to have and raise children. This leaves us with a question, where does the other 50% come from? One extremely politically incorrect paper claims that 11.8% (how precise!) of the pay gap comes from the monthly cycle of menstruation.

The other paper from the London School of Economics is explained by Chris Dillow. It appears that lesbian women in a steady relationship have a much smaller gender pay gap than heterosexual women. Two possible reasons: that they are less likely to take a career break to have children, and, as Chris points out, there is some evidence that at least some lesbians have more masculine (which might equate to systemizing by our EQSQ personality tests) mental traits.

Whether all of these things ought to be happening is slightly different from whether they are and also different from what we want to do about them as well. Another little bit of evidence is that the gender pay gap is smaller in the US than it is in the UK (where these studies were conducted) and women generally take shorter career breaks in the US for childbirth as well.

Quite what the policy implications for all this are I don’t know but have at it in the comments.

Another one of those jobs I’d never realized were quite so common: cost estimators. There’s nearly 200,000 ofthem (according to the BLS) which seems a lot but then with the increasing complexity of modern industry I can see the need for them now it’s been pointed out. As the name implies, they estimate the costs of projects. This might be, if they work in construction, the, err, costs of construction, or if in manufacturing or elsewhere the costs of other new projects.

The importance of the job comes not just from knowing how much time and money you will need to finish a project. Much more than that, is working out whether a project should ever be started in the first place. Unless you can work out how much it’s going to cost and how much the profit might be, then you just don’t know whether it’s a good idea or not.

While experience in the industry is useful, almost all starting these jobs now have a full four year college degree. For the construction industry (where most cost estimators work) in construction, building or architecture of one form or another. In more general business a college degree in economics, op0erations research, statistics, those sorts of things, is preferred.

The job requires great attention to detail and is definitely math heavy. Which means that by the results of our EQSQ tests we would expect those with high SQ scores, the systemizing or male brain types, to succeed at it.

I have to admit that this really rather surprised me. No, not that there are nearly half a million correctional officers (prison guards is another description) in the US, or that the job is reasonably well paid ($33,000 on average) according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The qualifications necessary also seem reasonable, high school diploma, a couple of year’s work experience (to show stability), training on the job and in the Federal system, perhaps the need for a college degree. Promotion to correctional sergeant (or even Warden) would be based on a mixture of experience and perhaps a further college degree.

No, the surprise was rather that it is clear that this is very much a job for EQ types, for those with the female brain type. Exactly the opposite of what my mental image was and really a rather surprising finding according to our EQSQ tests. The clue is here (from the BLS again):

The officers enforce regulations primarily through their interpersonal communications skills…

That is a clear indication of the need for both emotional intelligence and also an empathic nature. Which as I say rather surprises me. Not having actually met any correctional officers (well, I may have done in the course of life but not, you know, actually while they were working) I wouldn’t have known that at all, nor guessed it. Nor, even, if I’d sat down and thought through it, would I have reached that conclusion.

This appears to be another one of those jobs and professions that is becoming credentialed. By that I mean that traditionally people worked towards a job as a construction manager by working construction, becoming a foreman or supervisor, learned on the job and those rose to being a manager. Now, with the ever increasing complexity of the job, employers are looking for those with a college degree in the subject (or a related one). As the BLS tells us many colleges and universities now offer four year college degrees in construction management: it is even possible to get a Master’s college degree in the subject.

The job looks quite attractive too, with the average wage running around $70,000 a year (although that is after both the degree and some years of experience, of course). There are also 430,000 people doing this job so finding an employer shouldn’t be too hard, given the likely turnover as people move around.

Where would we place this on our EQSQ scale? Well, they’re managers so a certain amount of empathy is required: but then when you think of the average construction worker perhaps not all that much (:-)). It’s actually a terribly systemizing job, making sure that all the right things happen at the right time and in the right order (don’t lay the cement floors before you put in the sewers, for example, something my son in law once forgot) so I think we’d have to place it as a male brain type job, one for those with higher SQ than EQ scores.

It isn’t until you start really looking at the statistics until you find, as I am doing, quite how many people actually work in various trades and professions. Construction and building inspectors? I’d have thought a few thousand for the entire country: shows how much I know then. Nearly 100,000 of them making sure that houses and offices don’t fall down upon us. They’re also pretty well paid, the average at about $40,000 or so, right on the average household income for the country.

That’s surpisingly well paid for a job where the formal requirements are experience and a high school graduation certificate. Yes, many do have a two year college degree, there are many community, vocational and technical schools offering a college degree in buildings inspection and having one will certainly help in landing a good job. But even that looks like a pretty easy way of getting into the salaried middle classes. I would imagine that the low requirements for entry are explained by the necessity of continuing education: as the building codes are constantly changing everyone in the profession has to keep up to date, often through some form of online education.

As for our EQSQ tests, which personality type would be best suited? The male brain type, the systemizing one, without a doubt. Attention to detail (as well as some engineering skill) is the important point. The job isn’t so much checking that a building is safe, rather, that the correct procedures, in detail, have been followed.

Contrary to popular belief not all scientists wear white coats and work in laboratories (and even fewer have assistants named Igor). Conservation scientists and foresters are a good example of those that do not. While there are some, a very few, who do work indoors, studying the advanced areas of research, for most in the field it is hard work outdoors, actually in the forests. While to a city boy like myself (civilization is defined by indoor work, no heavy lifting) this doesn’t sound too good there are of course those ourdoors types for whom it is very heaven. Imagine getting paid to hike through the woods each day!
Yes, it is actually a little more complex than that but that is the setting for the work that has to be done, out in the great outdoors, soaking up the sun (and the rain, and the wind….). The usual route into the profession is via a four year college degree in forestry or something similar. For those few indoor jobs a further college degree will almost certainly be required, probably a Ph D.

Where would we place this job on our EQSQ spectrum? It’s a science, so obviously a certain amount of systemizing ability is necessary. However, our buddies over at the BLS think that being able to get along with people is vitally important. The range of people who can be involved (special interest and conservation groups, county, state and federal government, businesses and so on) in a management project can be so vast that it looks like empathy, the ability to understand and get along with others is also necessary.
I’d say a job best suited to those with balanced brains.

This is a subtle gradation of the computer programming that we talked about yesterday. The distinction is that programmers “program” while engineers “engineer”: that might sound like a slightly silly demarcation line but it does have meaning. Programming is purely to do with the code itself, line by line and symbol by symbol. As such it can be one of the most systemizing jobs on the planet. Computer software engineering however is more about contructing a system. A system, moreover, that has to be used by the extremely fallible people who inhabit that real world out there.

This means that, by the standards of our EQSQ personality tests, engineers don’t have to be quite so far to the SQ side as the pure programmers. In fact, one of the great growth areas of the industry at the moment is trying to work out why it is that people seem to use only a small fraction of the bells and whistles that the prgrammers have worked so hard to create. This is a very much more empathic task: trying to understand why it is that people don’t use all the exciting goodies that people have sweated to incorporate. Is it because they are untrained and don’t know about them? Or is it that they do know about them and don’t want them? This then leads on to the much more interesting question of how to design the next generation of software.

The usual method of entry into the profession is via a four year college degree (according to the BLS) although many still enter with a two year college degree or training from a technical or vocational school. Continuing education, whether online or on campus is a feature of the job, keeping up with all of the new developments is a vital necessity.

There are various different types and levels of computer programming and at one end it might well be the most systems orientated job there is. In what is called assembly or low level programming, the practitioners are so systemizing as to be near the autistic spectrum. That may sound a little harsh but having worked with a number of them their interest in the real world is minimal, let alone their empathy with other people.

Fortunately not all of the profession is like that. In fact, at the other end, where coding is taking place to create the final systems that people actually use, there has recently been a shift in thinking. As teams get larger the empathic skills are more important in the functioning of those teams, of course, but it is also true that much computer power is now used to make things easier for the operator of the program. It’s also true that these days that is all of us. So the large companies spend a great deal of time now on working out how users use (if you’ll excuse the phrase) programs which requires quite a lot more understanding of humans and their desires than the profession is used to employing.
There is thus, from the point of view of our EQSQ personality tests, room for more than just those with very high SQ scores. While an intimate knowledge of maths and logic is still required, there’s a place for those with more balanced brain types as well.

As in any industry or profession that has boomed in recent years training has been somewhat haphazard. It is becoming more formalized now and the usual entry level qualification will be a two year college degree or its equivalent from a technical school. Some 50 % of the profession have a four year college degree and another 18% a higher one (from the BLS).

Yes, I know, betraying my own interests by returning to the subject of economists so soon. But we have another datum concerning where we should place economists in our EQSQ personality tests. Or, rather, the results from those personality tests that would lead us to conclude that the testee might (note, might, not will) be a good economist.

As we’ve noted before economics seems to be something that attracts those with the male type brain, with the higher spatial skills and abstract modelling abilities that go with that. Today’s reinforcement of our supposition comes not from Brian Caplan’s research into why men appear to both know more economics and like the subject better but from Lynne Kiesling again. We start with Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

My wife is going away for a couple of weeks and the kids are at camp. “Won’t you be lonely?,” she asked, “The house will be so quiet.” Before I could properly think it through I replied, “Oh no, I’ll enjoy the peace and quiet.” I could tell immediately that this was not the right answer.

No, that isn’t, as the more perceptive readers will note, quite what you say to the love of your life at the prospect of being deprived of her company for a couple of weeks. Or not too often, at least. I then, at my economics blog, noted that economists can be less than, how shall we put this, tactful. When a factory closes, or tens of thousands put out of work, or interest rates rise making mortgages more expensive for everyone, economists have been known to say “Great, just what needed to happen” which isn’t, you might note, all that empathic of them.

Lynne, as above, notes that she has been known to make comments similar to Alex’s to her husband: …and perhaps economists are a bit lacking in tact …

We’ve studied an entire two pieces of data in our attempt to uncover whether economists are systemizing or empathizing and both seem to agree: with typically male attributes in pattern and spatial recognition and a definite lack of tact (another name for which is empathy). Yes, definitely male brain types, systemizers.