I recently read the book Why men don't listen & Women can't read maps by Allan and Barbara Pease.
Update 20-Jan-2004: Sian Lewis also has the book, and was kind enough to inform me, that I had swapped the male and female scores. Men should get 10 points for answering A and women 15 — I have updated the applet, hopefully the wrong score did not make anyone question their sexuality ;-)
Also a big thanks to all others who have written me, I haven't gotten around to answer all of you, but your feedback is appreciated — also the girl who wrote that: "All this is based on pre conceieved sexist notions, not science". To anyone with similar thoughts, the book (and this page) is not about promoting men as the superior sex.
The book contains a test and suggests that the reader photocopy this and give it to friends, co-workers etc. as it should be a real eye-opener.
Since I do not have a photocopy-machine I did this small JAVA applet which ask the questions from the test.
I have quoted some paragraphs from the book, these are framed and written in italic text (if you have stylesheets enabled).
This test is designed to indicate the masculinity or femininity of your brain patterns.There are no right or wrong answers - the result is simply an indication of the probable level of male hormone your brain did, or did not, receive around 6 to 8 weeks after your conception.
This is reflected in your preference of values, behaviours, style, orientations and choices.
After answering all 30 questions you get a score. There is one score in case you are a man and another one if you are a women.
According to the book from where this test originates you shall award yourself 5 points for any questions where the answers didn't accurately reflect your life or you left them blank.
Most males will score between 0-180 point and most females 150-300.Brains which are 'wired' for mainly masculine thinking usually score below 150. The closer to 0 they are, the more masculine they are, and the higher their testosterone level is likely to be.
These people demonstrate strong logical, analytical and verbal skills and tend to be disciplined and well-organised. The closer to 0 they score, the better they are at projecting costs and planning outcomes for statistical data, with their emotions hardly influencing them at all.
Scores in the minus range are high masculine scores. These scores show that large amounts of testosterone were present in the early stages of the fostal development.
The lower the score for a woman, the more likely she will be to have lesbian tendencies. Brains that are wired for mainly feminine thinking will score higher than 180. The higher the number, the more feminine the brain is, and the more likely the person is to demonstrate significant creative artistic and musical talents. They will make more of their decisions on intution or gut feeling, and are good at recognising problems using minimal data. They are also good at solving problems using creativity and insight.
The higher is the score above 180 for a man, the greater the chance he will be gay.
Males who score below 0 and women who score above 300 have brains that are wired so oppositely that the only thing they are likely to have in common is that they live on the same planet!
The overlap
Scores between 150-180 show compatibility of thought for both sexes, or a foot in both sexaul camps.
These people do not show a bias for either male or female thinking and usually demonstrate a flexibility in thinking that can be a significant advantage to any group who are going through a problem-solving process.
They have the predisposition to make friends with both men and women.
After having a few of my friends try this test I must confess that I find the result very doubtsome. Alone the fact that the description says: »...women who score above 300...« when in fact women can't get above 300 points, show that this is not hard science (update: the latter comment is invalid, since I had swapped the scores ;) ).
The points are given like this. A gives 10 points for men and 15 for women. B and C gives plus and minus 5 for both genders.
If you wish to make the user interface comply to the basic rules of software design then you may wish to grab the source. If AWT wasn't that shitty then I'd have done so myself :-)
Page created 9-Aug-2001 by Allan Odgaard.