Men really are couch experts! A study found that men were more likely to think they could land a plane after watching a YouTube video than women.
- Approximately 582 subjects were shown a 3 minute 44 second clip of the pilot making a sudden descent.
- The clip was made “useless” and did not give an understanding of how to fly the plane.
- However, the men rated their confidence 12.24 out of 100 higher when landing the plane than the women after both genders watched the video.
Some say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and when it comes to assessing their own abilities, men really seem to live on another planet.
A new study has found that men are more likely to be couch experts than women.
Experts from the University of Waikato in New Zealand found that men are more likely than women to think they can land a plane after watching a YouTube video.
Some say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and when it comes to assessing their own abilities, men really seem to live on another planet. New study finds men are more likely to be “couch experts” than women (image)
About 582 subjects were divided into groups, half of which were shown a three-minute, 44-second video of a pilot making a sudden descent.
But the clip was deliberately made “useless” – since you couldn’t even see the controls of the plane – so it didn’t provide additional insight into how to fly the plane.
However, the men rated their confidence 12.24 out of 100 higher when landing the plane than the women after both genders watched the video.
Scientists from the University of Waikato in New Zealand have published a study in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
“Men tend to be more overconfident in their knowledge and abilities than women, even in high-stakes environments such as running and diving competitions,” the researchers say.
“This gender gap in self-confidence is most common when people are asked to evaluate their performance in a male task.
“On the contrary, women do not show the same self-confidence in female tasks.”
Despite the more obvious cockiness of the men, both sexes were overconfident in landing the plane “without death” after watching the video.
The authors said that the visual presentation can help the viewer better imagine that they can actually land the plane.
Women are more likely to admit that the count is wrong
In a recent study, researchers at Tel Hai College in Israel set out to understand clients’ ability to be honest in real life situations.
A group of 278 participants were asked to eat alone at a restaurant in Tel Aviv and order two items from the menu, such as coffee and a sandwich.
At the end of the meal, they were presented with a bill, but one of the two dishes they ate was missing.
The researchers found that the majority (169) of the participants did not report the mistake to their waiter.
However, a number of factors seem to have played a role in deciding whether or not to raise the issue with the waiter.
Female shoppers were 16% more likely to report missing items than male shoppers.
And those customers whose more expensive item was omitted were twice as likely to report an error.