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07/21/2001 Archived Entry: "Why Men Don't Iron"

I just saw an interesting documentary on Discovery Health called Why Men Don't Iron*, about the emotional differences between the sexes. There were all sorts of interesting little snippets, including the fact that men find it more difficult to distinguish when women are feeling sad as opposed to happy through facial features and body language alone - there was a great quote about this where one researcher said, "When men don't seem to pick up on what women feel, it's not because they don't care, it's simply because they can't tell." Amen brother!

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the documentary. I remember thinking at the start, when they conducted their own test which showed that women can multitask better than men (something about integrated brain functions as opposed to modularised - can't say I've heard it before myself), that the test was ridiculous - small sample size, too many outside factors, correlation doesn't mean causation, etc etc. Right on cue, the programme admitted that all of these problems existed but the test's results did follow predictions made by other more rigorous tests. I was impressed, not only by that but also their efforts to emphasise the importance of environmental and social factors in behaviour.

Perhaps all of this is simply because recently I've had a low opinion of TV documentaries in general; I appreciate that there's only so much you can say in an hour to the 'informed layman' but that doesn't excuse broad generalisations and whatnot.

So anyway, if you have Sky television then it's worth checking to see if the programme is being repeated.

*It was the third episode, Emotional Differences, that I saw