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Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors

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Abstract

The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Performance is related to mental rotation skills and self-assessment in beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. We assume that, due to differential feedback, self-assessment incrementally replaces the controlling influence of mental rotation, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Results suggest that sex differences in spatial cognition persist in real-life situations, but that socio-psychological factors modulate the biological causes of sex differences.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ralf Rupprath from aps Abschlepp-Pannen-Service Bochum for providing junk cars and Tobias Otto for technical help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801, Bochum, Germany

    Claudia C. Wolf, Sebastian Ocklenburg, Beyza Ören, Cordula Becker & Onur Güntürkün

  2. EFS Unternehmensberatung GesmbH, Ungargasse 59-61, 1030, Vienna, Austria

    Andrea Hofstätter, Christa Bös & Truls Thorstensen

  3. Audi AG, Auto-Union-Straße, 85045, Ingolstadt, Germany

    Markus Popken

Authors
  1. Claudia C. Wolf
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  2. Sebastian Ocklenburg
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  3. Beyza Ören
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  4. Cordula Becker
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  5. Andrea Hofstätter
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  6. Christa Bös
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  7. Markus Popken
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  8. Truls Thorstensen
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  9. Onur Güntürkün
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Claudia C. Wolf or Truls Thorstensen.

Additional information

C. C. Wolf and S. Ocklenburg contributed equally to this work.

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Wolf, C.C., Ocklenburg, S., Ören, B. et al. Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors. Psychological Research 74, 429–435 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-009-0267-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-009-0267-6

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