Citation

Burtt HE. J. Exp. Psychol. 1920; 3(5): 390-395.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1920, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/h0072937

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Münsterberg has stated on the basis of experimental evidence that men profit more from discussion of a doubtful objective situation than do women. As a by-product of another investigation the author offers interesting evidence on this point. In an experiment in which the subject lied or told the truth about an imaginary crime a group of persons judged his veracity by his observable reactions during the examination. After five minutes' open discussion a second judgment was made. Judgments were obtained from 156 men and 88 women. The men and women were members of the same college class. There was a considerable tendency to change one's decision as a result of the discussion, but the change was in the wrong direction about as often as in the right. There were no sex differences observed in the ability to profit by the discussion. There was a constant tendency to consider too frequently that the subject was lying. The author suggests that the difference between his results and Münsterberg's may be due to the fact that in the latter case the women were an unselected group of undergraduates, while the men were a selected group of graduate students. From Psych Bulletin 18:06:00428. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)