Brain and Cognition 45, 392–414 (2001)

doi:10.1006/brcg.2001.1287, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Stereotypes and Steroids:

Using a Psychobiosocial Model
to Understand Cognitive Sex Differences
Diane F. Halpern
California State University, San Bernardino

and
Uner Tan
Department of Physiology, Black Sea Technical University Medical School, Trabzon, Turkey

To further our understanding of cognitive sex differences, we studied the relationship be-
tween menstrual phase (via serum estradiol and progesterone levels) and cognitive abilities
and cognitive performance in a sample of medical students in eastern Turkey. As expected,
we found no sex differences on the Cattell ‘‘Culture Fair Intelligence Test’’ (a figural reasoning
test), with females scoring significantly higher on a Turkish version of the Finding A’s Test
(rapid word knowledge) and males scoring significantly higher on a paper-and-pencil mental
rotation test. The women showed a slight enhancement on the Finding A’s Test and a slight
decrement in Cattell scores during the preovulatory phase of their cycle that (probably) coin-
cided with a rise in estrogen. There were also small cycle-related enhancements in performance
for these women on the mental rotation test that may reflect cyclical increases in estrogen
and progesterone. Additional analyses showed an inverted U-shaped function in level of estra-
diol and the Cattell Test. Finally, for women who were tested on Day 10 of their menstrual
cycle, there was a negative linear relationship between their Cattell scores and level of proges-
terone. Stereotypes about the cognitive abilities of males and females did not correspond
to performance on the mental rotation or Finding A’s Test, so the sex-typical results could
not be attributed to either stereotype threat or stereotype activation. For practical purposes,
hormone-related effects were generally small. Variations over the menstrual cycle do not pro-
vide evidence for a ‘‘smarter’’ sex, but they do further our understanding of steroidal action
on human cognitive performance.  2001 Academic Press

The question of how to understand sex-typical patterns of cognitive abilities has

important implications for psychologists and neuroscientists from a diverse array of
backgrounds and theoretical orientations. A large body of research has shown that
there are some cognitive tasks that show no sex differences, others in which the sex

Address correspondence and reprint requests to to Diane F. Halpern, Department of Psychology, Cali-
fornia State University, San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407. Fax:
(909) 880-7003. E-mail: dhalpern@csusb.edu.
We thank Simay Ikier for assistance with the Turkish language version of the Finding A’s Test and
Dr. Marcia Collaer at Middlebury College for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. We
thank the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey, for support-
ing the first author during her stay in Turkey and for assistance with the Turkish language and data
collection.
392
0278-2626/01 $35.00
Copyright  2001 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 393

differences are relatively small, and others in which the sex differences are very large
and consistent. In categorizing the differences, we use a model that focuses on the
underlying cognitive processes required by cognitive tasks because the older way of
categorizing sex differences into verbal, quantitative, and visual–spatial has too many
inconsistencies in terms of the research findings (Loring-Meier & Halpern, 1999).
The cognitive process model is also more congruent with the idea that brain regions
are specialized by processes, for example (and for most people), the left hemisphere
may be more proficient at sequential processing, a mode that is best adapted for
verbal information, and the right hemisphere may be more proficient at simultaneous,
holistic information processing, a mode that is best adapted for spatial stimuli (Hel-
lige, 1993).
One of the largest between-sex differences favoring males is reliably found on
those visual–spatial tasks that require transformations in visual–spatial working
memory (Krikorian, Bartok, & Gay, 1996). These tasks include mental rotation,
which involves the imagined motion of stationary figures (e.g., What would a figure
look like if it were rotated in space?), Piaget’s Water Level Test, which requires the
generation of a visual image to determine how the water level would appear in a tilted
glass, and spatiotemporal tasks, which involve the imagination of physical movement
through space, such as making time-of-impact judgments for a figure moving across
a monitor or tracking a moving object through three-dimensional space (Law, Pelle-
grino, & Hunt, 1993; Linn & Petersen, 1985, 1986; Robert, 1990). Males also excel
at spatial–motor tasks such as throwing a ball or other object at a moving or stationary
target or intercepting a moving object (Watson & Kimura, 1991). The size of the
between-sex difference on mental rotation tasks is very large and is reliably found
in childhood prior to puberty. In a meta-analysis of mental rotation, Masters and
Sanders (1993) computed the effect size to be d ⫽ .9 and found that it has remained
unchanged at this value for over 18 years. The sex difference in these tasks is unre-
lated to performance variables such as willingness to guess or confidence in one’s
ability (Masters, 1998). The effect size for mental rotation tasks is so large that many
statisticians maintain that tests of statistical significance are not needed (Cohen &
Cohen, 1983).
Some, but not all, quantitative tasks also show large sex differences. Consistent
with a cognitive processes model, the research is easier to interpret if the nature of
the cognitive task is examined rather than the fact that numbers are used. Females
have a clear advantage at quantitative tasks in the early elementary school years when
math tasks involve learning math facts and arithmetic calculations (Engelhard, 1990;
Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990). These math tasks require rapid and efficient learn-
ing of math facts and their retrieval from long-term memory. Sometime before the
start of puberty, when the nature of the mathematical tasks changes and becomes
more visuospatial (e.g., geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), the advantage shifts
to males who maintain their superior performance into old age. Thus, the size and
direction of the effect depends on developmental stage and type of quantitative task
with retrieval of math information from memory favoring females and transforma-
tions of representations favoring males. Of course, these are average differences and
there is considerable within-group variability for all of the cognitive tasks. One of
the largest differences occurs on the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Assess-
ment Test (SAT-M) which shows a substantial advantage for males at approximately
d ⫽ .33 to .50 (Halpern, 2000; U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Disproportion-
ately more males than females score in the very highest ranges of the SAT-M (Ben-
bow, 1988, 1990; Willingham & Cole, 1997). This is a large difference with important
social policy implications because the SAT-M is used in determining college admis-
sions. The largest differences are found in the tails of the distributions.
394 HALPERN AND TAN

Large effects favoring females are found with verbal fluency tasks (e.g., ‘‘name
as many word as you can that start with the letter ‘t’ ’’) and synonym generation
tasks (e.g., ‘‘what are some synonyms for the word ‘good’ ’’), both of which require
the rapid retrieval of verbal information from long-term memory (Loring-Meier &
Halpern, 1999). These tasks show effect sizes somewhere between d ⫽ .5 and 1.2
(Hines, 1990). Other tests which consistently favor women are ‘‘Finding As,’’ which
requires the rapid scanning of rows of words to find and cross out the A’s (a measure
of perceptual speed or rapid access to information about words), ‘‘Identical Pictures,’’
which involves visual matches of static displays, one of several tests that show a
sizable female advantage for object memory, ‘‘Coding,’’ which require the rapid
matching of geometric symbols with numbers, and memory for location, which
can be considered a spatial task (Kimura & Hampson, 1994; Silverman & Eals,
1992).
Standardized tests also show that females are better at spelling (Stanley, Benbow,
Brody, Dauber, & Lupkowski, 1992) and that females are consistently and substan-
tially better, on average, on college achievement tests in literature, English composi-
tion, and Spanish (Stanley, 1993). Females excel in many different measures of lan-
guage usage, especially writing (U.S. Department of Education, 1997). Females also
obtain higher overall reading scores among average (i.e., nondisabled) readers
(Hedges & Nowell, 1995; Mullis et al., 1993) and have a lower incidence of reading
disorders than males (Stein, 1994). Males, however, have the advantage on tests of
verbal analogies (Lim, 1994), a verbal task that may also require the transformation
of information in short-term working memory. Birenbaum, Kelly, and Levi-Keren
(1994) reported that females excel at associative memory tasks, once again confirm-
ing that, overall, females have better long-term memories than males. Another way
of conceptualizing differences in types of memory is to divide memories into episodic
memory for events in one’s own life and semantic memory for facts, such as the
multiplication tables, historical events that were not experienced personally (e.g., the
Revolutionary War), and general word knowledge (Tulving, 1986). In a series of
studies, Herlitz and her colleagues (Herlitz, Airaksinen, & Nordstrom, 1999; Herlitz,
Nilsson, & Baeckman, 1997) found that females have better episodic memory than
males.
Many of these differences appear early in life. The male advantage in transforming
information in visuospatial short-term memory is seen as early as it can be tested,
perhaps at age 3, and in mathematical giftedness as early as preschool (Levine, Hut-
tenlocher, Taylor, & Langrock, 1999; Livesey & Intili, 1996; Robinson, Abbott, Ber-
ninger, & Busse, 1996). The perceptual advantages seen in females appear early in
infancy, with fluency differences in the toddler years (Reinsch & Sanders, 1992). Of
all of the cognitive sex differences, differences in language usage are among the first
to appear developmentally. Females ages 1 to 5 years old are more proficient in
language skills than their male counterparts (McGuiness, 1976; Smolak, 1986). There
is also some evidence that girls may talk about 1 month earlier than boys and produce
longer utterances than boys (e.g., Moore, 1967; Shucard, Shucard, & Thomas, 1987).
There are significant sex differences in the rate of vocabulary growth during the
toddler years. On average, there is a 13-word difference in vocabulary size between
girls and boys at 16 months of age, which grows to a 51-word difference at 20 months
and a 115-word difference at 24 months (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Saltzer, &
Lyons, 1991). These researchers found that the differential rate in vocabulary growth
was unrelated to how much mothers spoke to their children—mothers spoke as much
to their boy babies as to their girl babies. They concluded that ‘‘gender differences
in early vocabulary growth seem to reflect early capacity differences’’ (p. 245). Girls
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 395

mature earlier than boys, so they frequently achieve cognitive milestones at a younger
age.

Nature–Nurture and Percentage of Explained Variance

For many psychologists and neuroscientists concerned with questions about sex
differences and similarities, explanations can usually be identified as falling some-
where along a continuum anchored at one end by ‘‘nature,’’ or biologically oriented
causes, or ‘‘nurture,’’ or environmentally oriented causes, with few contemporary
psychologists expecting that any complex human behavior would be entirely explain-
able by either nature or nurture. Like other scientists, psychologists tend to think
about the variables they study in terms of the data analytic techniques that are used
to interpret them. With the general linear model at the heart of most contemporary
statistical procedures, it is common to ask about the proportion of the variance in
our data that can be accounted for by biological and environmental/social vari-
ables and their interaction. Inherent in this question is the idea that biology and
environment/social variables can be separated into ‘‘independent variables’’ and their
interaction can be separated from the main effects. An implicit assumption when
questions about the percentage of explained variance are asked is that there is a num-
ber attributable to each of these sources of variance that exists in the population, and
if researchers are clever in their experimental designs and analyses, they can discover
the ‘‘true’’ population parameters. We believe that questions about the proportion
of variance explained by environmental and biological variables and their interaction
are based on the implicit assumption that biological and environmental/social vari-
ables can be assessed independently. The psychobiosocial model offers a better alter-
native to the nature–nurture dichotomy or nature–nurture continuum.

The Psychobiological Model in Which Cause and Effect Are Circular

The psychobiosocial model is based on the premise that even simple distinctions
like dividing variables into biological and psychosocial (i.e., environmental) catego-
ries are impossible. Consider, for example, the fact that there are differences and
similarities in female and male brains (e.g., Gur et al., 1999). The differences and
similarities in brain structures could have been caused, enhanced, or decreased by
environmental stimuli, so data showing that the brain is sexually dimorphic are re-
flective of both nature and nurture. It is now well documented that brain size and
structures remain plastic throughout life (Nelson, 1999; Stefan, Kunesch, Cohen,
Benecke, & Classen, 2000). Ungerleider (1995), for example, used brain imaging
techniques to show changes in cortical representations that occurred after specific
experiences. What individuals learn influences neural structures like dendritic
branching and cell size; brain architectures, in turn, support certain skills and abilities
which may lead us to select additional experiences. The interface between experience
and biology is seamless. Biology and environment are as inseparable as conjoined
twins who share a common heart. A psychobiosocial framework provides a more
integrated way of thinking about the inextricable processes that influence brain struc-
tures and behaviors.
Every individual is predisposed by his or her biology to learn some skills more
readily than others and everyone selects experiences in ways that are biased by prior
learning histories and beliefs about appropriate behaviors for females and males.
Similarly, many stereotypes about male and female differences reflect real group
differences (Swim, 1994) and by learning and endorsing them, individuals may also
396 HALPERN AND TAN

be selecting environments that increase or decrease these differences. A schematic

diagram of the psychobiosocial model is depicted in Fig. 1.

Stereotypes and Other Group-Based Beliefs

An exciting area of recent research has shown the importance of the unconscious
effects of stereotypes on thought and performance. There are many examples of the
way an individual’s beliefs can alter a wide range of biological systems, including
hormone secretions, motor responses, breathing rates, and digestion, just to name a
few. For example, an announcement of a ‘‘surprise quiz’’ can elicit many of these
somatic reactions in almost any college classroom. Similarly, experimenter expecta-
tions can unconsciously influence how people respond to situations. Medical re-
searchers are well aware of these two types of effects, which is why double-blind,
placebo-controlled, crossover studies are the ‘‘gold standard’’ for medical research.
Recent work by Steele and his colleagues (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995)
has extended these principles to explain how beliefs about the cognitive abilities of
different groups can cause or contribute to group differences on tests of cognitive
abilities. According to Steele, when group membership (male or female or racial
group, for example) is made salient at the time a cognitive test is being administered,
commonly held beliefs about the performance of one’s group are activated. Test-
takers are ‘‘threatened’’ by these beliefs out of the concern that they will conform
to their group’s negative stereotype. Stereotype threat will only affect test perfor-
mance when the group membership is made salient, the test that is being taken is
relevant to one’s group (e.g., the stereotype that females are not as good in mathemat-
ics as males), test performance is important to the individuals taking the test, and
the test is at a level of difficulty that the additional burden of defending against a
perceived threat would cause a performance decrement.
In an interesting study with Asian American women, the stereotype that Asians
are good at mathematics was pitted against the stereotype that women are not good
at mathematics (Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999). The Asian American women

FIG. 1. A schematic diagram of a psychobiosocial model in which nature and nurture are continuous
and inseparable. From Halpern, D. F. (2000). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (3rd ed.). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum. Reprinted with permission.
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 397

performed better on an advanced test of mathematics when the positive stereotype

was salient compared with the condition when the negative stereotype was made
salient. Despite these successes in showing the importance of stereotype threat, we
note here that there have also been several failed attempts to find evidence that stereo-
type threat decreases performance on high-stakes tests. In a series of studies using
real-life testing environments, Stricker (1998) and Stricker and Ward (1998) did not
find that manipulations of the salience of one’s sex or ethnicity had any effect on
performance. Thus, there are still many unknowns about the reliability of stereotype
threat and the conditions under which it operates.
Stereotypes can influence performance on tests of cognitive abilities either because
of the ‘‘threat’’ that the test-taker will confirm negative stereotypes about her or his
own group or by ‘‘mere activation’’ of the stereotype, a process that does not require
that the test-taker be a member of the group that is negatively stereotyped (Dijkster-
huis & van Knippenberg, 1996, 1998). In a powerful demonstration of these pro-
cesses, even people who claim to have ‘‘no stereotypes’’ about the members of some
group take significantly longer to respond to simple questions about members of that
group when the questions are phrased in ways that are incompatible with the stereo-
types of that group (Banaji & Hardin, 1996). It has been shown repeatedly that test-
takers are often not consciously aware that a stereotype has been activated, so they
cannot respond in ways that would mitigate the negative effects of the stereotype
(Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 2000).

Steroidal Hormones and Cognition

The link between being female or male and sex-related differences in cognition
begins by positing that the same prenatal hormones that cause a developing fetus’
genitals to form in a male or female direction also influence brain development (Col-
laer & Hines, 1995). One of the most fascinating areas of recent research has shown
that testosterone and estrogen continue to play critical roles in sex-typical cognitive
abilities throughout the life span in normal populations. Highly publicized studies
have shown that women’s cognitive abilities and fine motor skills fluctuate in a recip-
rocal fashion across the menstrual cycle (Hampson, 1990; Hampson & Kimura, 1988;
Phillips & Silverman, 1997). According to Kimura (1996), this suggests that there
may be an ‘‘optimal’’ level of testosterone for certain spatial abilities. Women per-
form better on visuospatial tests when they are in the menstrual phase of their men-
strual cycle, a phase in which estrogen is low, than when they are in the midluteal
or follicular phase, when estrogen is much higher. Performance on verbal and fine
manual skills is also higher when women are in the high-estrogen phases of their
cycle. A parallel finding that never attracted the same attention in the media is that
males also show cyclical patterns of hormone concentrations and the correlated rise
and fall of specific cognitive abilities. The spatial skills performance of normal males
fluctuates in concert with daily variations in testosterone (higher testosterone concen-
trations in early morning than later in the day; Moffat & Hampson, 1996) and seasonal
variations (in North America, testosterone levels are higher in autumn than in spring;
Kimura & Hampson, 1994).
Steroidal hormones influence performance on tests of cognitive abilities throughout
the adult years and well into old age. When normal aging men were given testosterone
to enhance sexual functioning, they also showed improved performance on visual–
spatial tests (Janowsky, Oviatt, & Orwoll, 1994). Research on the cognitive conse-
quences of testosterone replacement therapies has shown that testosterone treatment
in men with naturally low levels improved both their spatial and verbal performance
(Cherrier, 1999); however, other studies have found that only verbal abilities are
398 HALPERN AND TAN

improved when older men take supplemental testosterone (Alexander et al., 1998)
and that male performance on a mental rotation task was correlated with mean levels
of testosterone, but not changes in testosterone levels (Silverman, Kastuk, Choi, &
Phillips, 1999). Research on the specific effects of exogenous testosterone for men
in later life is still in its infancy; it is clear that cognitive functioning is affected, but
the exact nature of the effect is not known (Plouffe & Simon, 1998).
Additional strong support for the contention that hormone levels in adults play
an important role in cognitive functioning comes from studies with female-to-male
transsexuals, who were given high doses of testosterone in preparation for sex-change
therapy. For the hormone-treated transsexuals, visual–spatial skills improved dramat-
ically and their verbal fluency skills declined dramatically within 3 months (Van
Goozen, Cohen-Kettenis, Gooren, Frijda, & Van De Poll, 1995). Follow-up studies
have shown that the gain in visual–spatial skills and loss in verbal fluency was un-
changed over several years (Slabbekoorn, van Goozen, Megens, Gooren, & Cohen-
Kettenis, 1999). Although it is risky to attempt to generalize from massive doses of
cross-sex hormones used by transsexuals, these data add support to the growing body
of evidence showing that hormones have important effects on cognition throughout
life.
One of the most active areas of research concerns the use of estrogen replacement
therapy in older adults. Life spans have increased by several decades over the past
100 years in the United States and many other countries. The result is the first large
generation of old people, a segment of the population whose proportion is expected
to rise even more dramatically over the next 50 years. Women are now living approxi-
mately 1/3 of their lives after the onset of menopause, when estrogen output is severely
curtailed. The number of age-associated dementias is also rising very rapidly. Ap-
proximately 6–8% of all persons aged 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease and
the prevalence of the disease is increasing (Nourhashemi et al., 2000). The number
of studies on the cognitive effects of estrogen replacement therapy is very large. Not
surprisingly, the results of these studies are not completely consistent, especially in
light of the fact that different tests of cognitive abilities are used in different studies,
dose size and method of administration vary within and across studies, the effects
of unopposed estrogen and estrogen with progesterone are often mixed together,
length of time on estrogen and baseline cognitive statuses vary, and ages often differ,
just to name a few of the reasons why there are no clear-cut answers to the deceptively
simple question of whether estrogen replacement therapy can maintain normal cogni-
tive functions or delay or avoid cognitive decline in older adults.
Although there are many studies that have failed to find beneficial effects for hor-
mone replacement in elderly women (e.g., Polo-Kantola, Portin, Polo, Helenius, Ir-
jala, & Erkkola, 1998), there are a substantial number of studies that suggest that
exogenous estrogen (pill, patch, cream, or other form) causes positive effects on the
cognition of healthy older women and possibly for women in early stages of Alzhei-
mer’s disease (e.g., Henderson, Paganini-Hill, Emanuel, Dunn, & Buckwalter, 1994;
Wong, Liu, Fuh, Wang, Hsu, Wang, & Sheng, 1999). This conclusion is in accord
with Sherwin’s (1999) meta-analytic review of 16 prospective, placebo-controlled
studies in humans, where she concludes that ‘‘Estrogen specifically maintains verbal
memory in women and may prevent or forestall the deterioration in short- and long-
term memory that occurs with normal aging. There is also evidence that estrogen
decreases the incidence of Alzheimer disease or retards its onset or both’’ (p. 315).
The role of estrogens in cognition aging is complex. For example, Rice et al. (2000)
found that scores on a cognitive abilities screening instrument significantly improved
over a 2-year period for women taking unopposed estrogen and significantly
worsened for women taking estrogen–progestin combinations, so informed decisions
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 399

about the use of hormones will depend on many variables that we still do not under-
stand. These studies also suggest that progesterone levels may be as important as
estrogen levels in determining the cognitive outcomes of hormone replacement ther-
apy. Most of the studies that have shown that estrogen levels influence cognition
have failed to assess levels of progesterone and, thus, may be missing an important
piece of the hormone-and-cognition puzzle.
Additional evidence for the conclusion that estrogens and progestins play an impor-
tant role in healthy cognitive functioning in older women comes from studies of the
amount of exposure women receive over their lifetime to these hormones. In one
such study of healthy older women, researchers found that those women who had
had greater exposure to these cyclical hormones (for example, early age of menarche
and late menopause) had higher scores on a battery of cognitive tasks than women
with shorter exposures to estrogen (Smith et al., 1999). Similarly, women who had
hysterectomies at younger ages, and thus were exposed to higher levels of estrogen
and progesterone for shorter periods of their lives, performed significantly worse than
women who had their hysterectomy later in life (Nappi, Sinforiani, Mauri, Bono,
Polatti, & Nappi, 1999; Richards, Kuh, Hardy, & Wadsworth, 1999). Across all of
the studies of estrogen and progesterone, positive results were usually strongest for
measures of verbal memory, an area where females typically excel. The results of
these studies and others provide a strong causal link between levels of adult hormone
levels and sex-typical patterns of cognitive performance.
Research on hormone replacement in older men is decades behind research on
estrogen replacement in older women, but it is now being conducted at a rapid rate.
One reason for the relative paucity of research on hormone replacement in men may
be that the proportion of women diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease is much higher
than the proportion of men who suffer with this devastating disease (Nourhashemi
et al., 2000).

Animal Studies
There is a large research literature on nonhuman mammals that supports the con-
clusion that steroidal hormones are important in normal cognitive functioning. The
advantage of nonhuman research is that it allows researchers to employ experimental
methods that permit strong causal inferences—the random assignment of subjects to
treatment conditions. Here are just a few examples selected from a huge research
literature to support the main idea that steroidal hormones are critical to sex differ-
ences in cognitive abilities.
In a well-designed test of the hypothesis that estrogen is important in normal learn-
ing, experimenters removed the ovaries from female rats (Simpkins, Singh, & Bishop,
1994). The ovarectomized rats showed learning and memory deficits and correlated
differences in the activation of brain regions thought to underlie these processes (de-
crease in activity in hippocampus and frontal cortex) that were reversed when they
were given estrogen. The researchers found that the hormones produced by the ova-
ries altered neural activity [caused a decrease in high choline uptake and choline
acetyltransferase (the enzyme for the production of acetylcholine activity) in the hip-
pocampus and frontal cortex]. The hippocampus is involved in several memory pro-
cesses, including the transfer of information from short-term memory to long-term
memory, particularly in spatial memory. This indicates that estrogen is behaviorally
active in tests of learning and memory and that estrogen serves as a neuroprotective
agent.
Based on animal models, McEwen, Alves, Bulloch, and Weiland (1998) hypothe-
sized that there are essentially three effects of estrogens and progestins that are es-
400 HALPERN AND TAN

pecially relevant to memory processes. First, estrogens and progestins regulate

new excitatory synapses (synaptogenesis) in the CA1 region of the hippocampus.
Short-term verbal memory in humans and working memory in rats are enhanced by
estrogen-induced synaptic formation. Second, there are developmentally programmed
sex differences in the hippocampal structure that may help explain the differing strate-
gies used by male and female rats in solving spatial navigation problems. Third,
ovarian steroids have effects throughout the entire brain, including effects on the
brainstem and midbrain catecholaminergic neurons, midbrain serotonergic pathways,
and the basal forebrain cholinergic system. McEwen et al. (1998) believe that similar
relationships may exist in human populations. Research with monkeys also shows
that sex differences on selected learning tasks (object reversal for example) are re-
versed with prenatal hormone manipulations, so that when male monkey are given
estrogens they exhibit learning behaviors that are typical of female monkeys, with
the reverse occurring for female monkeys (Overman, Bachevalier, Schumann, &
Ryan, 1996). Thus, these and other animal studies also show that an understanding
of cognitive sex differences and similarities requires a close examination of the role
of sex hormones on performance on cognitive tasks.
As seen in this brief review of the literature on cognitive sex differences, stereo-
types and steroidal hormones need to be studied together because they both play
important roles in human cognition. Thus, we studied the joint effects of stereotypical
beliefs and sex hormones (estrogen and progesterone) on selected cognitive tasks
using a sample of adult Turkish students. We thought that a sample from Turkey
would be particularly valuable in pursuing answers to questions about cognitive sex
differences because we expected a very wide range of beliefs about sex-related cogni-
tive abilities. It is possible that studies based solely on Western cultures underesti-
mates the effect of stereotypes on tests of cognitive abilities because there may not
be sufficient variability in the stereotypes about women and men in these cultures.
By contrast, modern Turkey is a secular country that is approximately 98% Muslim
(Encyclopedia of the Orient, 2000). We expected that the usual distinction between
urban and rural areas in terms of beliefs about women and men would be magnified
in Turkey, where rural areas are more clearly identified with traditional religious
practices, such as covering women’s hair or bodies. Although large cities like Istanbul
are very similar to other large cities in Europe and the Northern hemisphere, the city
of Trabzon, which is near the eastern border of Turkey, is apparently more religiously
conservative, an assumption that is supported by the large number of women wearing
head scarves and other modes of dress that signal strong religious identification. It
seemed that medical students at the modern university in Trabzon would maintain
a wide range of stereotypical beliefs about the cognitive abilities of females and
males. Their scientific orientation as future physicians would suggest that their stereo-
types would be similar to those held in the West, but their cultural upbringing might
suggest more traditional stereotypes about the abilities of men and women.

METHOD

Prestudy Scale Development

In order to identify the stereotypes about women’s and men’s cognition that are commonly held in
Turkey, we wrote an instrument that assessed Beliefs About the Cognitive Abilities of Females and
Males. Individual items were written to be relevant and valid for young Turkish adults. When completed,
this questionnaire was administered to the entire 2nd-year class at Black Sea Technical University Medi-
cal School in Trabzon, Turkey, along with several different cognitive tests. Serum hormone levels were
also assayed for female participants. Each of these components is described below.
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 401

Research with American college students has shown that students believe that sex-typed traits and
abilities are probabilistically associated with each sex and that college students understand notions of
group variability (Swim, 1994). Furthermore, most people are fairly accurate in their assessments of sex
differences, with their stereotypes generally reflecting the results of experimental studies of sex differ-
ences. When inaccuracies occurred, they tended to underestimate the size of the sex difference (Eagly,
1995). We designed a questionnaire in which participants were required to estimate the probability that
selected cognitive abilities would be associated with females or males, based on the assumption that
research with American college students would generalize to Turkish college students. All items were
written in Turkish by young native Turks who were also fluent in English (as a second language). The
questionnaire was revised several times until a pretest with college students showed that the directions
for completing the questionnaire were clear and a range of values was given for each item.
Respondents were told to imagine that they were to meet a person whom they had never met before.
For each item, they were to assume that the information provided was all that they knew about this
person. Based only on the information in each item, they were to estimate the probability that the person
they were to meet was male or female. Two columns were aligned next to each item—one labeled
‘‘male’’ and one labeled ‘‘female.’’ For each item, respondents wrote in a number that corresponded
to their probability estimate. They were told that the two numbers had to sum to 100. In addition to
responding to the probability that an unknown person would be either female or male given certain facts,
respondents were asked to rate their own ability on each of the same 20 items. Self-ratings were included
to determine if participants held stereotypes that generally applied to other people, but believed that
they themselves did not necessarily conform to the stereotypes.

Participants
The entire 2nd-year class at the Black Sea Technical University Medical School was given the ques-
tionnaire to complete during a regularly scheduled laboratory period. All instructions, written and oral,
were in Turkish. All respondents were between 18 and 20 years old and had graduated from a Turkish
high school. In Turkey, students who want a career in medicine enter medical school directly from high
school (after completing 11 years of school) and attend medical school instead of an undergraduate
program. Thus, they are comparable in age and education to American students who enter college directly
after completing high school.
Sixty-eight males and 59 females completed the Beliefs About the Cognitive Abilities of Females
and Males Questionnaire. (Participants were never told the name of the questionnaire.) Participants were
told that the experimenter was interested in learning the extent to which they associated different traits
and activities as typical for males and females. Thus, there was no deception. Questionnaire items and
the mean probability that each item was associated with being male or female as rated by male and
female participants are presented in Table 1. Table 1 also shows the mean rating for each item by males
and females on the extent to which each item is descriptive of him- or herself, using a 7-point scale,
with 1 ⫽ not at all descriptive of me to 7 ⫽ highly descriptive of me. Self ratings were made to assess
the possibility that participants might believe that an ability is generally associated with one sex or the
other, but that as an individual, he or she is an exception to these stereotypes. Items in Table 1 are listed
in descending order from most male-typical to most female-typical. Items were presented to participants
in random order.
Questionnaire items were selected to be representative of cognitive domains where sex differences
are consistently found (with Western samples). Filler items where there are no sex differences in cognitive
abilities (e.g., ability to understand a newspaper article or draw) and sex-related activities unrelated to
cognitive abilities (e.g., running speed) were also included as a check for response biases. Numbers in
parentheses refer to item number on Table 1. Based on data from Western samples, males typically
excel at basketball (2) and darts (3), physics (4), map reading (6), knowledge of geography (8), and
mental rotation (9). Running speed (1) was included as a noncognitive activity that favors males. Females
typically excel at arithmetic (5), word puzzles (7), foreign languages (11), memory for interpersonal/
episodic information (12, 17, and 18), spelling (19), memory for object locations (15), and perceptual
sensitivity (16). Sewing was included as a noncognitive activity that favors females (20). (See Halpern,
1997, 2000, for references that support these sex-related conclusions.)
It was decided a priori that any item whose mean probability value ranged between 45 and 55% would
be considered not meaningfully different from 50%, the value indicating that it was as likely to be
associated with a female as with a male. None of the mean ratings fell in this range, but No. 10, ‘‘can
understand an article in the newspaper’’ was close to this range. Because it was written as a foil that
shows no sex difference and it was close to the a priori value of 50%, it was dropped from all data
analyses. It is interesting to note that No. 9, ‘‘can recognize a complicated drawing when he/she sees
it upside down,’’ was written to be descriptive of the very large sex difference that favors males in
402 HALPERN AND TAN

TABLE 1
Questionnaire Items and Mean Probabilities
Probability male Self-ratings
Item Male Ss Female Ss Males Females

‘‘You are going to meet a person whom you have

never met before. . . .’’
‘‘What is the probability that this person is male or
female given that this person . . .’’
1. Was the best runner in the senior class at high 80.1 68.5 4.56 2.87
school a
2. Can almost always make free shots in basketball 77.7 71.8 3.99 3.98
games a
3. Can hit a target with a dart at least once in 4 72.0 66.6 5.18 3.17
tries
4. Is able to understand concepts in physics a 70.2 60.1 5.57 4.40
5. Can multiply two-digit numbers in [his/her] b 66.2 58.2 5.54 4.43
head a
6. This is the first time in your city and could find 61.6 55.6 5.05 4.62
the way with just a map
7. Is good at doing crossword puzzles 59.0 53.0 4.22 4.13
8. Can label a blank map of Africa with the cor- 54.8 56.3 2.98 2.98
rect country names
9. Can recognize a complicated drawing when 56.9 46.8 4.62 4.53
[he/she] sees it upside-down
10. Can understand an article in the newspaper a 56.6 45.9 5.57 5.34
11. Can speak 3 foreign languages fluently a 43.3 39.4 2.90 3.38
12. Can identify the name of the perfume worn by 47.9 37.7 4.57 4.83
[his/her] mother a
13. Got the highest grades in the senior class when 42.1 44.9 3.47 3.62
at the university
14. Can draw well 36.4 36.0 3.06 3.64
15. Is good at remembering where common objects 44.1 38.2 4.52 4.81
like keys were put
16. Can sense when a small amount of salt has been 37.8 34.6 4.90 5.33
added to food previously tasted
17. Never forgets to call a friend at a time they 46.2 32.8 5.94 5.67
have agreed upon
18. Can clearly remember the details of personal 46.7 32.8 5.19 5.26
events, like the first day of a new job
19. Rarely makes spelling mistakes a 36.5 29.7 4.33 5.09
20. Can sew well enough to make a pillowcase 15.3 19.2 2.49 3.89

Notes.
a
Sex of subject statistically significant, p ⬍ .01.
b
In Turkish, the personal pronouns that correspond to he or she or his or her are sex-neutral. Items
were presented in random order. Numbers must add to 100 for each item.
Reliabilty coefficients: Male Scale (items 1 to 9) α ⫽ .69; Female Scale (items 11 to 20) α ⫽ .76;
Self-ratings were made on scale ranging from 1 to 7, with 1 ⫽ not at all descriptive of you and 7 ⫽
highly descriptive of you.

mental rotation tasks. The males in this study rated it as only slightly more likely to be associated with
males than females, with females rating it as more typical of females than of males. Thus, the Turkish
students in this sample do not have the stereotype that the ability to visualize rotated figures is more
likely to be associated with males than females.
Both male and female respondents rated the first 9 items in Table 1 (with the one exception of recogniz-
ing a figure upside down, just noted) as more probable for males than for females. These 9 items can
be considered the ‘‘male-typical scale.’’ The last 10 items were rated by both males and females as
being more typical of females. These 11 items can be considered the ‘‘female-typical scale.’’ Alpha
reliability coefficients were computed for the male-typical scale, α ⫽ .69, and the female-typical scale,
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 403

α ⫽ .76. Thus, with the exception noted, there was adequate agreement as to which cognitive abilities
are stereotypically male and female.
As expected, females rated themselves higher on the female-typical items (mean for females on the
female-typical scale ⫽ 4.55 and on the male-typical scale ⫽ 3.90) and males rated themselves higher
on the male-typical items (mean on the female-typical scale ⫽ 4.14 and on the male-typical scale ⫽
4.64). In general, respondents believed that they were best at those activities that were stereotypically
associated with their own sex. We had planned to investigate the effect of the stereotype that males are
better on tasks that involve mentally rotating a figure on performance on a standardized cognitive measure
of mental rotation, but had to abandon that analysis when we found that Turkish students do not believe
that males are stereotypically better at that task. Similarly, we had planned to investigate the effect of
the stereotype that females are better on verbal tasks such as spelling and solving word puzzles on a
cognitive test that measures facility with these tasks. The finding that the ability to solve word problems
was associated with males and spelling ability was associated with females for the Turkish sample also
eliminated these planned tests because there could not be any effect of stereotype threat or stereotype
activation on a cognitive test if the stereotype does not exist.

Cognitive Measures
Three cognitive ability tests were administered in regularly scheduled laboratory periods, one at a
time, spaced over a 2-month period. The tests were selected to be representative of tests that typically
show a large male advantage, a large female advantage, and no sex differences. The tests administered
were a Turkish language version of the ‘‘Finding A’s’’ Test, a test that is classified as ‘‘feminine,’’ the
Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) Mental Rotation Test, a test that is classified as ‘‘masculine,’’ and the
Cattell Nonverbal Test of Intelligence (Cattell & Cattell, 1963), a test that is classified as ‘‘neutral’’
(Kimura, 1999). To assess the relationship between normal fluctuations in hormone levels and test perfor-
mance, the women participants were asked to indicate the day of their menstrual cycle that they were
experiencing when the cognitive tests were administered. Blood samples were taken from all students
during the same laboratory period in which the participants took the Cattell Test of Nonverbal Intelli-
gence. Finally, female students from other medical school classes were recruited to take the Cattell Test
of Nonverbal Intelligence on the 10th day of their menstrual cycle (9 days following the 1st day of
menstrual bleeding). Blood samples were also taken at this time. Some female students from other
medical school classes also volunteered to take the mental rotation test, which is explained in more
detail in the following sections. Data from each of these tests with their related hormone measures are
presented below.

Cattell Nonverbal Intelligence Test (Test of ‘‘g’’: Culture Fair)

As the name implies, the Cattell Nonverbal Test of Intelligence was designed to be a general measure
of intelligence that does not utilize verbal test material. It is a test of figural reasoning. Native Turkish
speakers who were highly fluent in English translated instructions from English into Turkish. Instructions
were given verbally, and participants were free to ask questions to clarify the nature of the tasks. This
test was administered to all 2nd-year medical students (99 males and 59 females) who were in attendance
during a regularly scheduled laboratory session. Scores were tallied for female and male students sepa-
rately, and as expected, there were no significant differences between the females and males on this
test. The female mean was 115.2 (SD ⫽ 9.9); the male mean was 113.0 (SD ⫽ 12.6), F(1, 156) ⫽ 1.3,
p ⬎ .10.
Upon completion of the Cattell Nonverbal Intelligence Test, female participants were asked to indicate
the day of their menstrual cycle using a number line in which 1 ⫽ 1st day of menstrual bleeding. Women
who had irregular cycles, who did not know their menstrual day, or did not want to reveal that information
were told to leave it blank. (No questions were asked about possible use of oral contraceptives because
such questions would be culturally insensitive, and oral contraceptive use among unmarried women in
Turkey is probably rare. All of the women in this study were unmarried.) Forty women reported their
menstrual day. In an attempt to understand the relationship between scores on the Cattell Test and self-
reported menstrual day, a regression analysis was performed. All data analyses, including curve fitting,
were conducted with Sigma Plot for Windows 2.0.
The linear trend was nonsignificant, F(1, 38) ⫽ 1.73, R ⫽ .21; however, the quadratic trend was
statistically significant, F(2, 37) ⫽ 3.15, p ⬍ .05, R ⫽ .38. These data are shown in Fig. 2. Perusal of
Fig. 2 will reveal that Cattell scores showed a dip around Day 10, which is the approximate time in the
menstrual cycle that estrogen levels are at their highest.
Given that participants were 2nd-year medical students who took the cognitive tests during their regu-
larly scheduled physiology laboratory section, all students had blood samples drawn in the same labora-
404 HALPERN AND TAN

FIG. 2. Scores on the Cattell Test as a function of day of menstrual cycle (where 1 ⫽ 1st menstrual
bleeding day).

tory period. The drawing of blood samples is part of the regular activities in these laboratory sections
where students learn how to draw and analyze blood samples. Blood samples for the women were
subjected to radioimmunoassays to assess serum estradiol levels. Cattell scores were analyzed as a func-
tion of serum estradiol for the women participants. The linear trend was nonsignificant, F(1, 47) ⫽ .28,
p ⬎ .10; however the quadratic trend was statistically significant, F(2, 46) ⫽ 4.83, p ⬍ .01, R ⫽ .42.
These data are shown in Fig. 3, which shows that moderate levels of serum estradiol are associated with
the highest scores on the Cattell Test.

FIG. 3. Scores on the Cattell Test as a function of serum estradiol levels for women participants.
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 405

FIG. 4. Scores on the Cattell Test as a function of serum progesterone levels for women on their
10th menstrual day (where 1 ⫽ 1st menstrual bleeding day).

In addition to the 2nd-year medical students who served as participants in this study, women from
the other classes in the medical school were asked to both take the Cattell Nonverbal Intelligence Test
and have blood samples drawn on the 10th day of their menstrual cycle. The 10th day of the menstrual
cycle coincided with the dip in Cattell scores found with women in the 2nd-year class, which presumably
reflects the high levels of estradiol at this portion of the menstrual cycle. We wanted to investigate the
relationship between Cattell scores and progesterone levels on Day 10 to determine if the low levels of
progesterone during the preovulatory phase of cycle might also be playing a role in the cyclical variation
in Cattell scores. Participants were instructed to count 9 days following their first menstrual bleeding
day and to schedule appointments at the medical school laboratory to coincide with the 10th day of their
cycle. Forty women participated in this portion of the study. Blood samples were subject to radioimmuno-
assays to measure serum levels of progesterone. A significant negative linear trend was found, r ⫽ ⫺.61,
with higher Cattell scores associated with lower concentrations of progesterone for women in their 10th
menstrual day. This relationship is shown in Fig. 4.

Finding A’s (Turkish Language Version)

The Finding A’s Test is a cognitive test that reliably yields higher scores for females than males (e.g.,
Kimura & Hampson, 1994). In this task, participants are presented with columns of words that extend
across several pages. Their task is to read the words as quickly as possible, crossing out the letter ‘‘a’’
whenever it appears in the list of words. This is a timed test, so reading speed and knowledge of spelling
are being tested. Finding A’s is usually described as a test of ‘‘perceptual speed.’’ A Turkish language
version of this test was written for this study. Many of the common words that appeared in the English
language version were translated into Turkish; however, some of the English words were replaced with
words that are more commonly used in the Turkish language. (There are no word frequency data available
for Turkish.) The Turkish version was written by native Turkish speakers with high levels of proficiency
in English. The Turkish version was pretested with samples of Turkish college students and was revised
several times until it was judged to be approximately comparable to the English language version in
terms of the general level of familiarity with the words used in the test. All instructions were presented
in Turkish.
All 2nd-year medical students who were present on the day of testing served as participants for this
test. The number of A’s that was correctly cancelled in the time limit was tallied separately for males
and females. The results were in accord with those typically found with the English language version.
The females (N ⫽ 63) scored significantly higher than the males (N ⫽ 90). The mean score for the
females was 46 (SD ⫽ 7.2); the mean score for the males was 39.9 (SD ⫽ 8.4), F(1, 151) ⫽ 21.8, p ⬍
.001, d ⫽ .77. For the women who indicated their menstrual day (N ⫽ 55), the number correct on the
406 HALPERN AND TAN

FIG. 5. Scores on the Turkish Language Version of the Finding A’s Test as a function of day of
menstrual cycle (where 1 ⫽ 1st menstrual bleeding day).

Finding A’s Test was analyzed as a function of menstrual day. The data were analyzed for linear, qua-
dratic, and cubic trends. The linear trend was nonsignificant; however, the quadratic and cubic trends
were statistically significant, F(2, 52) ⫽ 3.5, p ⬍ .04, R ⫽ .34, for the quadratic trend, and F(3, 51) ⫽
5.84, p ⬍ .001, R ⫽ .51 for cubic trend. These data are graphically depicted in Fig. 5.

Mental Rotation Test

The Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) mental rotation test was administered to all 2nd-year medical stu-
dents who were present on the day of test administration. This is a timed, group administered paper-
and-pencil test that requires participants to identify block figures that are identical to a standard figure
except for their orientation. All instructions were translated into Turkish by native Turkish speakers who
were highly proficient in English. As expected, males performed significantly better than the females
on this test (males: N ⫽ 33, mean ⫽ 9.2, SD ⫽ 3.2; females: N ⫽ 35, mean ⫽ 7.3, SD ⫽ 3.3), F(1,
66) ⫽ 5.6, p ⬍ .05, d ⫽ .59. As for the previous tests, the number of correct responses was analyzed
as a function of menstrual day for those female participants who indicated their menstrual day. Because
there were fewer participants in class on the day the mental rotation test was administered, additional
female participants were recruited from the other classes at the medical school so that trend analyses
for the menstrual-day data could be computed. A total of 71 female students (all years combined) were
used for the trend analysis—the 35 in the 2nd-year class who were used for comparison with the male
students and 36 from the other classes. We note here that the mean number correct for the mental rotation
task for all 71 female students was 9.5 (SD ⫽ 4.6), a value that exceeds the male mean for the 2nd-
year class. This is a surprising result. The number of mental rotation problems answered correctly by
the female students as a function of menstrual cycle day was analyzed for linear, quadratic, and cubic
trends. The dual peaks in female performance on this task occur in the preovulatory period, when estrogen
levels are at their highest, and in the midluteal phase, when estrogen levels rise again and progesterone
levels are at their highest. Only the cubic trend was statistically significant, F(3, 67) ⫽ 2.14, p ⬍ .05,
R ⫽ .22. These data are shown in Fig. 6.

DISCUSSION

Three important issues relating to sex differences in cognitive abilities were ad-
dressed in this study: (a) the generalizability of results usually obtained with Western
samples was tested by administering three commonly used tests of cognitive abilities
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 407

FIG. 6. Number correct on the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test as a function of day of
menstrual cycle (where 1 ⫽ 1st menstrual bleeding day).

to a sample of Turkish medical school students, (b) direct assessments of stereotypical

beliefs about sex differences in cognitive abilities were made with this Turkish sam-
ple to determine if there was a relationship between the stereotypes they maintained
about the ways in which males and females differ in their cognitive abilities and
performance on tests designed to assess those abilities, and (c) direct and indirect
measures of estradiol and progesterone in women were correlated with performance
on the cognitive tests. The results from this large and theoretically rich data set extend
our current understanding of the interrelated variables that affect performance on
cognitive tests and raise new questions for future research. Each of the research ques-
tions is discussed separately.

Do the Sex Differences Typically Found on Cognitive Tests with Western Samples
Generalize to Comparable Samples from Eastern Turkey?
The simple answer to this question is ‘‘yes.’’ The Turkish medical students, com-
parable in age and education to college students in Western countries, showed the
same patterns of sex differences and similarities, with one exception. As expected,
there were no sex differences on the Cattell Nonverbal Intelligence Test, there was
a large female advantage on a Turkish language version of the Finding A’s Test, a
language-based test of perceptual speed, and there was a medium-to-large male ad-
vantage on the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) mental rotation test. The only surprising
result was that when additional female participants were used so that the relationship
between menstrual day and number correct on the mental rotation test could be ana-
lyzed, the mean number correct for the females exceeded that for the males. Although
any explanation of these anomalous findings is speculative, it may be that the female
students who volunteered to participate in the mental rotation study (i.e., their partici-
pation was not required as it was for the 2nd-year students) were unusually talented
in this area. Data from other parts of the world support the contention that sex differ-
ences in cognitive abilities tend to be universal in that males and females score differ-
408 HALPERN AND TAN

ently on many cognitive tests (e.g., Beller & Gafni, 1996; Huang, 1993). We note
here that there are also data showing country differences (e.g., females in China and
Japan tend to score higher than American males on tests of advanced mathematics)
and country ⫻ sex interactions (e.g., females in these countries also tend to score
lower than males from their own countries on tests of advanced mathematics; Colvin,
1996). Furthermore, the pattern of sex differences, with some tests favoring males
and others favoring females, shows that although there are sex-related differences in
some cognitive abilities, there is no basis for concluding that there is a smarter sex.

Can Stereotype Threat or Stereotype Activation Be Used to Explain the Sex

Differences in Cognitive Abilities Found with This Turkish Sample?
Although there was fairly good agreement about commonly held stereotypes con-
cerning the cognitive abilities of males and females among the participants, the ste-
reotypes that would be applicable to the tests of mental rotation and Finding A’s
were not as predicted. In general, participants believed that males were about as good
as females in recognizing a complex figure that was ‘‘upside down.’’ The female
participants believed, by a slight margin, that females would be better at this task
and the males believed, by a small margin, that males would be better at this task.
Given the usual finding that males are much better at psychometric tests of mental
rotation, it cannot be argued from these data that the test results are caused by or
correlated with the threat that one will confirm a negative stereotype of one’s own
group (e.g., Steele, 1997; Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999); or by the mere activation
of a stereotype (e.g., Dijksterhuis, Bargh, & Miedema, 2000). Similarly, we expected
that participants would indicate that both spelling ability and solving word problems
would be stereotypically female, but instead participants responded that the ability
to solve word problems is a male trait and good spelling is a female trait. Thus, it
cannot be argued that the female superiority on the Finding A’s Test was caused by
the threat to males that they would perform poorly or the mere activation of a stereo-
type about spelling/word problem-solving ability. We note here that we did obtain
good evidence that these Turkish students have stereotypes about female and male
traits and behaviors. However, the stereotypes did not conform to the findings from
the tests of cognitive abilities. Thus, we urge future researchers to actually assess
the nature, strength, and direction of stereotypes before deciding if stereotype action
could be responsible for results on cognitive tests. As in the present study, other
investigators may find that the stereotypes they assume to be pervasive are, in fact,
weak or nonexistent.

Do Estradiol and Progesterone Levels Correlate with Cognitive Performance

for (Normally Cycling) Females?
The data from self-reported menstrual cycle day and from serum levels of estradiol
and progesterone indicate that hormone levels play a role in performance on cognitive
tests. But, we also issue a strong caveat in interpreting these results. The effects on
cognitive performance across the normal cycle seem to be quite small and thus are
usually not detected in research unless the researchers specifically look for them.
Additionally, research that employs multiple measures at several different points in
the menstrual cycle is needed before strong conclusions can be made. Although we
recognize the need for repeated measures across the menstrual cycle, we are con-
cerned that carryover effects from repeated measurement may cancel any benefits
from a repeated-measures experimental design. Cognitive performance seems to cor-
relate with the rise in estradiol that is seen in the preovulatory portion of the menstrual
 STEREOTYPES AND STEROIDS 409

cycle and the rise in both estradiol and progesterone that occurs in the midluteal
phase of the cycle. Although this pattern of results is in accord with numerous studies
with both humans (e.g., Hampson & Kimura, 1988) and nonhuman mammals (e.g.,
Vilain & McCabe, 1998), our understanding of the effects of steroidal hormones on
human cognition is still in its infancy. Hormone effects operate within a total milieu,
which includes many other hormones that were not measured in these studies (e.g.,
cortisol). We also know that hormone levels change in response to environmental
stimuli, so we cannot make strong causal inferences from the data presented here.
The curvilinear relationship between Cattell scores and estradiol levels may appear
to conform to Nyborg’s (1983, 1990) theory that spatial ability is maximized at some
‘‘optimal level of estradiol.’’ According to this theory, deviations from this optimal
level, in either direction, are associated with poorer performance on spatial tasks.
Despite the fact that the inverted U-shaped function for the relationship between
Cattell scores and serum estradiol seems to confirm this theory, there are still too
many questions and inconsistencies to conclude that spatial ability depends on opti-
mal estradiol levels. First, the participants for whom we correlated serum estradiol
and Cattell scores were all women. The optimal estradiol level theory pertains to
males and females. It predicts that middle levels of estradiol would be found in ‘‘femi-
nine’ ’’ men, for whom low levels of testosterone are aromatized into low levels of
testosterone relative to the male norm, and ‘‘masculine’’ women, for whom high
levels of testosterone are aromatized into high levels of estradiol relative to the norm
for females. Thus, the predicted curvilinear relationship between estradiol and spatial
ability would be found only when male and female data are combined, which is not
the case in the present study. The data relating performance on the mental rotation
task and estradiol pose even more difficulties to a unified or simple theory that related
hormone levels to cognitive performance. Higher levels of estradiol were correlated
with (small) enhancements on the mental rotation task for women, which is opposite
from the result that would be expected if estradiol depresses performance on male-
typical tasks. It is possible that studies that show depressed performance were using
ovulation as a time of measurement, a time when there are dips in serum estradiol
levels relative to Days 10 and 19, and were not looking at performance over the
entire cycle.
The relationship between steroidal hormones and cognitive abilities is surely com-
plex, operating via neural pathways that are established and maintained as a function
of prenatal influences, life experiences, and hormones in the adult years. The fact
that testosterone is normally converted to estradiol in normal males further compli-
cates our understanding of the ways in which steroidal hormones influence cognition.
The data presented here are strong evidence for the conclusion that hormones play
a role in cognitive performance, but the exact nature of that role remains elusive.

UNDERSTANDING COGNITIVE SEX DIFFERENCES IN CONTEXT

What can we conclude from these and other data? It seems that the results of the
studies reported here could be used to argue for or against almost any of the contem-
porary theories that have been advanced to explain the politically sensitive topic
of cognitive sex differences. Psychologists who favor evolutionary explanations for
contemporary social behaviors will be quick to point out the cross-cultural similarities
(e.g., Geary, 1998). The data presented here and from many other countries support
the idea that men, on average, score higher on some tests of visual–spatial working
memory and women score higher on some tests of encoding and retrieval of word-
related information from long-term memory. Evolutionary psychologists posit that
410 HALPERN AND TAN

these differences reflect the division of labor in hunter–gatherer societies, where men
traveled long distances and presumably developed a neuroarchitecture that supported
spatial navigation (e.g., Gaulin, 1995). Women, on the other hand, gathered food and
would have developed brains that supported memory for location, which would
change seasonally. Yet, those opposed to evolutionary interpretations could also use
these and other cross-cultural data to show large differences among cultures. For
example, we were surprised to find that the well-replicated sex difference favoring
men on the mental rotation test disappeared when the women who volunteered to
take the mental rotation test were added to the sample, possibly because of a self-
selection bias by participants who volunteered to take the mental rotation test.
Psychologists who prefer a sociocultural explanation for cognitive sex differences
can point to the growing body of work on stereotype threat and stereotype activation
and conclude that beliefs about the performance of one’s own group affect perfor-
mance in ways that we do not understand (Steele, 1997). Those who are opposed to
sociocultural explanations can counter with the finding that stereotypes tend to be
highly accurate and when they depart from values that are found in studies of sex
differences, they underestimate actual group differences (Swim, 1994). The notions
of stereotype threat and activation cannot be used to explain the results in the present
study because the stereotypes did not match female and male performance on the
cognitive tests. On the other hand, consistent evidence of male and female stereotypes
emerged for this Turkish sample, but they were not directly related to the abilities
that were assessed.
Finally, biological psychologists can point to the orderly relationships between
estradiol and progesterone levels for the female participants to conclude that there
is a relationship between performance on cognitive tests and circulating hormone
levels. Research from other laboratories suggests that testosterone is also important
in cognitive functioning, but testosterone was not examined in the present study
(Sherwin, 1999). Unfortunately, we are a long way from understanding the relation-
ships among hormones and cognitive abilities and the many variables that affect
them both. Steroidal hormones do not operate in isolation and environmental events,
including other hormones like cortisol, which is secreted in stressful situations, and
other environmental/task-related influences on hormone secretions could also be used
to explain these data.
Whichever interpretation of the causal factors in cognitive sex differences is pre-
ferred, we leave readers with a stern caveat. There are a great many ethical questions
that emerge as researchers uncover new truths about how we think and how this
knowledge radically changes our view of human nature. The possibilities for misuse
of this knowledge loom large. We urge investigators in this complex and controversial
area to recognize that we do not have to be the same to be equal.

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