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Gender differences in perception: men and women see differently
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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A new discovery by scientists at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee challenges a number of studies that previously claimed that a person's ability to recognize faces is independent of the ability to recognize objects.
To prove the opposite, scientists conducted several tests, with the help of which they were able to identify the relationship between the ability to recognize faces and the ability to recognize different objects in men and women. For this, experts prepared a test that includes eight categories of visually similar objects: leaves, owls, butterflies, birds, mushrooms, cars, airplanes and motorcycles.
For example, men who are better at recognizing transport objects are better at recognizing faces, while women who tend to examine and remember living objects in more detail also have the same abilities.
Researchers have developed a new test that is as effective as the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test. It can be used to assess and “measure” a person’s ability to recognize faces.
After viewing a number of images, participants were shown three photographs at a time—one of the images they had previously seen and two that they had not previously seen. Participants were then asked to select the photo they had already seen.
To evaluate the results of the new test, the scientists increased the number of subjects to 227. The experiment involved 75 men and 82 women aged 22-24.
When the data obtained was analyzed, the experts found that increasing the number of categories of objects shown revealed gender differences in visual perception of images.
As it turned out, women were better able to navigate and select the right photo if they were living objects, while men were much better able to understand vehicles.
"This is not the first time that gender differences in perceptual task solving have been discovered. For example, a recent study by scientists also confirmed that men are better than women at recognizing vehicles. The researchers tried to explain this by the fact that men have better abstract thinking. However, we found that women are better than men at recognizing objects of a different kind, which means that the conclusions about men having better abstract thinking, at least in this case, are unfounded," the authors of the study say. "The conclusion of many scientists that the ability to recognize faces is not determined by the ability to recognize objects is based on a comparison of only one category of objects for both men and women.
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