selected readings of Diane Halpern

"Some have suggested that psychology should not study the biological basis of sex differences because biologically-based theories legitimize negative stereotypes of women. I respond to these critics by noting that silence does not counter stereotypes, ignorance does not promote equality, and differences are not deficiencies."

Wow. Jia yo, Diane!


"Sex, Brains & Hands" (elsewhere with diagrams and, alas, a sketchy article or two)

"The Science of Gender and Science: A Debate"

on Diane Halpern's Career

"The Nature and Nurture of Women in Science"

Sex Differences in Cognitive Ability, by Diane Halpern. 2000.

__

It frustrates me sometimes to see how Diane's work and the work of others in related fields have been used to oppress rather than as artillery for anti-oppression.

It's not surprising, though, as it takes much less imagination and creativity to imagine things the way they already are and were than it is to imagine a path to a future more fair.

Statistically speaking, I think that most people don't even know how bad they are at understanding the complex interactions between two conceptual clusters, and aren't trained enough in metacognition or metacommunication to even talk intelligently about what they think.

More concretely, people often seem to rely heavily on cluster mean (group averages or stereotypes, in other words) comparisons (which I conjecture has to do with how some of us might spatialize our concepts using some kind of multi-level median data structure), rather than being able to think about how people are distributed using either the mathematical formalism of variance, tails, and Cartesian functions or using empathetic sample-based intuition that grows from exposure to diverse distributions of people across and within the boxes that we define.