So the other day I was out on my usual lunchtime jog, when an older couple in a minivan pulled up next to me and asked how to get to (a nearby hotel that shall remain nameless). The road they were on, a small, residential dead-end, just happened to share a name with the larger, commercial road where the area's high end hotels are all situated, so I knew right away what had happened (darn GPSes! They're always getting people into trouble around here!). I gave them directions as best as I could, bid them good luck, and continued on my way.
About 5 minutes later, it occurred to me that I give directions differently than most guys I know, and I started to wonder if this was another "gender thing." That day I focused mainly on landmarks (e.g. "you'll pass a park on your left"), rather than on concrete map directions ("go north on Poplar about 2 miles until you get to Hollyhock"), which made me think of something I'd read a while back on the subject:
Studies over the past decade have shown that women are likelier to rely on landmarks and visual cues, and men on maps, cardinal directions (such as north and south) and gauges of distance.
There's a Men's Route And a Women's Route, washingtonpost.com
Sounds like what I experienced! But in Googling the subject tonight, I found a least one scientific study which seems to indicate that these differences are probably anecdotal at best:
[the researcher] gathered data from a more natural context, by driving alongside a customer in a petrol station, winding down her window and asking the person for directions. She did this 60 times, asking 30 men and 30 women. Ewald found no differences in the directions that she received, with the single exception that men tended to estimate how far away the destination was more often than women did. However the men’s estimates were more likely to be wrong than the women’s!Linguistics Research Digest
Still, there may be some truth to this. Not that it makes any difference, any more than if my ring fingers are the same length as my index fingers, or if my arms turn outward when I face my palms forward. But still, it made me chuckle.
When my mother-in-law gives directions it's pretty impossible to tell what she's talking about because she only uses the most obscure of visual cues.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think people just give directions differently and it's not really gender related.
I think this may be one of those "learned behavior" things, rather than an actual brain difference. So there may be certain male/female tendencies, but individuals will vary depending on their life experiences.
ReplyDeleteOr something. =P