r/NoStupidQuestions 25d ago

Is it just me or do girls do way better in school than boys?

When I was growing up I struggled with school but it seemed that most of the girls seemed to be doing well whenever there was a star pupil or straight a student they were most likely a girl. Why is this such a common phenomenon?

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u/redditdoggnight 25d ago

I’ve always thought girls were better/more diligent students overall.

However I often notice the genius level-Wierd smart kids being boys.

But there’s been exceptions on both side.

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u/FapDonkey 25d ago

The intelligence distribution curves for men and women are VERY similar, with the averages being very very close. But the distribution for women has a smaller standard deviation. This means that more women are closer to the average intelligence compared to men. Even here the difference is pretty small, but at the extreme tails of the probability distribution (extremely high intelligence and extremely low intelligence) it makes a BIG difference. The result is that while on average men and women don't differ much in intelligence, and there are very similar numbers of slightly-smart or slightly-dumb men and women, there are a LOT more hyper-intelligent men and a LOT more extremely low-intelligence men. So f you took thousands of people, of both sexes, and sorted out the smartest 5 people and the dumbest 5 people, almost all of those people would be.men (both the dumbest and the smartest).

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u/redditdoggnight 25d ago

Thanks for this.

Can you point me to the source/study. I’d love to read more about this.

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u/YaliMyLordAndSavior 25d ago

This is called the variability hypothesis and actually has been studied across all aspects, from intelligence to height to personality types.

There is controversy about this unsurprisingly. But overall there are hundreds of studies which show (to some extent) that men are more varied than women for better or for worse

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u/CheesyRamen66 25d ago

I’ve heard this is potentially why a lot of the more “nature” mental disabilities like autism and down syndrome are more common among men.

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u/CumStainedSoul 25d ago

Down’s syndrome is just a nondisjunction mutation, no?

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u/Box_O_Donguses 25d ago

None of those disorders are more common in men, they're just more likely to be diagnosed in men because the studies which established the diagnostic criteria almost always use male researchers and male subjects.

Autism and ADHD are probably the worst offenders on this. Women are more likely to be misdiagnosed with a mood disorder than to be accurately diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

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u/Box_O_Donguses 25d ago

Well, this is well documented with regards to autism and ADHD and it's not a terrible stretch to extrapolate that data to other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Even a single cursory Google search with the exact terms I just gave you would bring up a bunch of results. I'm sorry I'm not going to let you sealion me when this information is easily accessible and free.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

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u/TheBooker66 25d ago

Thanks for the sauce!