Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors | Hacker News Reader

Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors

thelastpsychiatrist.com

51 pointsandreyf39 comments

So I've TA'ed for a little while now and I think the answer isn't anything fundamental how women are regarded or how man are being biased against.

Men rarely, if ever, act as grateful as women when you help them. There's a long list of potential reasons for this, but I've found it nearly universally to be the case.

Even though it's not politically correct, you're more likely to help the person who will thank you sincerely for the help as opposed to the guy who feels like you owe it to him (also often the case).

My experience is not in line with yours. In my experience, answering calls and support questions, I've gotten plenty of guys who are grateful for the help. They might not gush about it, but they almost universally offer thanks for any help I give, it's just more in the guy-like "Thanks a lot, dude, I really appreciate it."

On the flip-side, in my experience (I run a MMO guild hosting site, so this is a demographic that's rife with drama), the women I've talked with have a much stronger tendency to get WAY vindictive. I find harshly written emails (on that rare occasion) tend to come from women moreso than men. The men I've helped, when sending an email concerning something like billing or whatnot, tend to be more chill about things "Hey, I noticed X and it doesn't seem to be in line with what I was expecting. What's up?", vs the emails I've gotten from women for similar issues that go something like "What the hell? I don't know what you guys are doing, but if this issue isn't resolved immediately, I'm going to dispute the charge" (mind you, that might be an initial correspondence).

None of this is universal, but those are some of the tendencies I've experienced.

That's been my experience as well. Guys are more arrogant and feel more entitled than girls and overall I have noticed that girls are more willing to put in the effort and do the work to get a good grade whereas guys will come to you with a sob story and all their initial enthusiasm about doing better will fizzle out within a week.

By "act grateful" you mean, she will (deliberately) mimic the signals that she finds you attractive, making you momentarily feel good about yourself. It's the same as when the pretty waitress flirts with you. She flirts with everyone, and gets good tips.

A man will simply say "cheers" and buy you a pint. What do you expect him to do?

Actually, I mean that she will say "Thank you so much!" on the way out of the door.

If I was going to TA to get hit on, I would probably TA something besides Introduction to Computer Systems. The girls I've dated tend to be more attractive than the girls who show up at office hours, and I'm deliberately cold to women who hit on me at office hours because it's insulting (and I'm kind of a dick).

And if ever there was a student who bought me a beer, s/he would be the first one to get help at office hours without a doubt. The problem is that the men tend to interrupt other students getting help, call for my attention across the room while I'm busy with something else, and just act with a general sense of entitled arrogance.

corollary: female strangers get better [any form of communication] response rates from [anybody]

How does that follow? Or do you intend to say that the observed effect is just a facet of a more general effect?

I'd say that in general:

  * Women are *far* better at communication than men
  * Men are more likely to respond to women, than
    women are likely to respond to men.

I don't know who this is news to though.

Your argument is indeed not new; I was just somewhat surprised to see "corollary: <general statement>" mean "this is a corollary of <general statement>" instead of "<general statement> is a corollary of this". I see that you meant the first.

EDIT: sorry if this sounds unnecessarily snippy; I honestly wondered if you meant the second.

Try it on IRC sometime. You'll find that within seconds, pretending to be a girl is instantly advantageous. Just don't overdo it.

iDog

http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html

It is just as likely that female professors are more likely to respond to female questions because they expect that females are more likely than males to listen to the answer. Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?

> Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?

Track record.

Isn't expecting that females to be more likely to listen than males a negative sexual bias?

I think the point GP was trying to make is that this isn't necessarily a case of male professors being nice to women just because they are attracted to them (or assume that they might be attractive) and that there is a possibility of sex. (or something to that effect)

It's still 'sexism' if a professor responds better to female students than male students because he perceives female students as being more receptive and grateful for the help. But not necessarily in a negative "I'm hoping to get laid" sort of way.

So it's okay to be sexist if you aren't doing it because you're attracted to the person?

I'm not saying anything of the sort. The implication that professors are being nice to female students to get sex implies that they are trying to abuse the power of their authority. If they are being nice because they perceive female students as more receptive to/grateful for help, it's a little more benign, no?

Not for the male students who don't get responses from the professor due to the stereotyping.

Sexism != reacting to the sexes differently. Men and women are not the same, and therefore they evoke different responses and reactions. This is not sexism.

That's exactly what sexism is. It's not always necessarily a bad thing.

No, it is not. Sexism, like racism, never has a positive or neutral connotation in any context in which I have ever heard it used. A black man is not intrinsically different than a white man. Therefore, to treat him such is racist, period. A woman is, however, intrinsically different than a man. To denigrate her because she is a women is sexism. To treat her as if she were a man and refuse to acknowledge her as a woman is, arguably, also sexism. On the contrary, merely to react differently to her, but not negatively, is not sexism.

I find that separating connotations from the core meanings of words leads to clearer arguments. In your position, if someone calls you sexist and you deny that, it's not clear if you're denying treating someone differently based on their sex or if you just don't think you're mistreating the person. My stance is more likely to lead to a response of, "Yes, I'm being sexist, but not in a wrong way."

We generally agree.

My first interpretation of this data is that professors are trying to encourage young women to get interested in their field, and therefore subconsciously giving them more resources, but that is probably because there are so few women in the fields I study. It would be nice to know what areas of research contained the studied professors, but I don't want to read all those comments.

Also, a sample size of several dozen? That doesn't sound like a lot to me.

Several dozen is plenty if the effect is strong. He claims it is.

In other interesting news: kids like candy.

Contrary to popular belief though, babies much prefer milk (breast or formula) to candy. So finding a baby with candy to 'take' may prove to be a difficult proposition (for varying definitions of 'baby', I suppose).

Candy in the possession of a baby is also likely to be covered in drool. Considering its inexpensiveness, why not just buy candy?

Maybe she (he?) has stumbled upon the single most important mechanism by which any single gender dominated industry self-compensates.

(I'm assuming here that - since the author emailed mostly males - this field is predominantly male; I have no facts to back up that assumption)

Would love to see a similar study into replies to emails from male/female aliases to professionals in a predominantly female field.

I've been reading this blog (really, letting it pile up in google reader) for some time now, and though I can't point you to a specific post, I'm pretty sure I remember the author being a he.

The post's comments describe a row of useful explanations for these facts apart from sexual focus.

If you combine that with the proportion of females in high level academic jobs you get a pretty clear picture: Females are encouraged to ask experts for help whilst somehow being discouraged from becoming experts themselves.

For females, don't get too excited.

If you're pretty, sexy, and all that, they will continue to respond you, and supported you in every endeavor. But, if you're not pretty, you would be judged only by your appearance. Not your brain.

Really? Everyone?

Can you back up this gigantic generalization, or is this simply rampant cynicism?

I know people of both sexes who judge people on appearances, but most folks I've dealt with don't let that get in the way.

Isn't that the point of this article?

And this is a surprise to anyone?

Of course male professors answer females at a higher response rate. Those in the academia world rarely have hot wives. Professors get married later in life (this has to do with them having no lives outside of the lab). They then have to settle for less than what they want so they marry an intelligent woman who is in that 4-6.5 range on a scale from 1-10. And when young melissamiller comes emailing, she serves as a welcome distraction to grading papers. Stop making this out to be a big deal.

You have broken the record for most unfounded generalizations in one paragraph.

Just because I don't have fancy science to back it up doesn't mean it's not true.

So what about the female professors. Did they settle for a 4.5 wife too?

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