Ever wonder why men are so much better than women when it comes
to retaining generally useless information?
I don’t know this for a fact; it’s just my impression. Whenever
my girlfriend’s brother comes to town we’ll often visit a local
tavern for hot wings and ale and a few rounds of barroom trivia.
We enjoy the competition, even though the opposition is mainly
70-year-old soaks. Jim works at a start-up in Silicon Valley, so
he’s our ace-in-the-hole when it comes to science and high-tech
questions. He’s also rather knowledgeable when it comes to
California punk rock bands. Though she would be loath to admit
it, my girlfriend prefers the camaraderie and hot wings more so
than the trivia. She sure doesn’t answer many of the questions.
Before I get myself into a swamp of trouble, let me acknowledge
that this isn’t because we are smarter than she is. (It’s true
that in general men have a slight IQ advantage over women, a
“trivial” percentage that means nothing on a practical level, but
even I am smart enough to know that her IQ is probably a good ten
to twenty points higher than mine. Okay, thirty.) Rather, I think
the trivia cards are stacked against women.
First, men simply seem to enjoy trivia more than women. We are
more competitive and delight in showing off, especially in front
of the girls. Doubtless it’s residue from our Darwinian past. We
show off to impress the girls and win a top-notch mate. Not that
women aren’t competitive. Just look at any beauty contest, or the
way women passively — or sometimes not so passively — fight
over the alpha males. It’s just that men are more open about
their killer instincts. According to the New York Times,
three times as many men as women apply to appear on the
trivia show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (Actually, the best
contestants, say the producers, are gay men, who have been
exposed to male and female popular culture.) It’s pretty much the
same story with regard to high school scholar bowl teams, where
males outnumber females 3-to-1. Sociologists suspect this is
because women underestimate their own intelligence, while men
overestimate theirs.
Think about the most common trivia categories: sports, history,
science and nature, geography, arts and literature, and
entertainment. Obviously men are more up on sports. That’s
because sports is one of the few acceptable subjects for men to
talk about. Suppose you are at a barbecue and you are introduced
to your girlfriend’s brother-in-law. Neither of you is thrilled
with the situation, but you have to talk about something.
Basically you have two conversational options: sports or sports.
Whereas women can talk about children or TV shows or
relationships or fashion or food, or just about anything.
Men are also slightly better at science and mathematics. Don’t
take it from me. Here it is straight out of the pages of
Scientific American: “Men generally are better at
mentally manipulating objects and at performing certain
quantitative tasks that rely on visual representations.” We know
men read more history than women (who read more fiction). And
according to the National Geographic Society, boys dominate
geography bees.
So, even if we give women arts and literature and entertainment,
men still dominate four of the six popular trivia categories. You
see what I mean about the deck being stacked.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE informs me that men and women remember
differently too. For instance, my girlfriend remembers everything
we ever said or did together and what she was wearing at the
time. I have only a vague recollection of lunch. There are few
things I dread more than being quizzed about what she gave me
last Christmas. Or what I gave her. Nor can I remember much about
books I’ve read or films I’ve watched. I have a friend who can
recite whole hilarious passages from Catch-22 after
having only read it once. I can pick up The Great Gatsby
every other year, and it is like I am reading it for the first
time. This is very depressing, since it makes me question the
point of reading if I cannot retain what I’ve read. The author
Stephen King says a lot of fiction writers have lousy memories,
and find this handicap helpful, since they have to rely not on
their memories, but on their imagination. This debilitation is
probably less useful to us nonfiction writers.
I am, however, inexplicably able to retain an endless assortment
of trivial data. The Norman Conquest? 1066. The Battle of Vienna?
1683. Capital of Bhutan? Thimphu. To whom did Melville dedicate
Moby Dick? Hawthorne…This makes me an odd amalgamation
of clueless know-it-all. Still I suppose there are worse things.
Best of all this aptitude gives me an excuse to indulge my
passion for hot wings, ale, and showing off.
As if I needed an excuse.
