Hello, my fellow peers at Uc Davis, my name is Muhammad Chaudhary I am currently a

second-year Managerial Economics major. Do you guys ever wonder if there's an actual

difference between the internal brain properties of a women vs man? In today's podcast, we will

be discussing how men and women show cognitive differences when it comes to certain

situations. The question of whether or not men and women brains were designed differently is a

debatable topic. This is an interesting topic to look at especially at a college campus because

there are so many stereotypes about the abilities and capabilities between men and women. As

Nixon stated in his article, “It has been overreported that boys tend to do better at math while

girls often excel at reading and writing. In truth, the degree of difference is context-dependent.”

(Nixon. par. 11) Often a huge misconception that many of us college students have to deal with.

Looking at different sources, I have come to an understanding that Men and women brains are

not designed differently from birth yet programmed differently through societal pressures and

life as growing up with within gender norms. There are many similar situations that both men

and women experience but the response from both can be very different. In this podcast, the

cognitive differences between men and women will be looked at based on situations, emotions,

and personal experience.

 There are often high-pressure situations that men and women are put into where how they

react determines the outcome of the situation. A lot of the time the reaction has to do with how

each individual person has dealt with past experiences. In a Live Science article by Robin Nixon,

Matters Of The Brain: Why Men and Women are So Different, he states, that there is a long time

belief that “boys and girls are born cognitively the same. It was the way parents and society

treated them that made them different”(Nixon, par. 1). This is interesting because the difference

between men and women especially comes down to how society programs them at a very young

age. A high-pressure situation like a car accident receives different reactions from men and

women. Men are usually raised with enough confidence to handle a situation like this by not

panicking and crying. Whereas women are more likely to panic and let that cloud their judgment

during situations like this because they often grow up with the mentality that they are too fragile

to handle situations like this. This research is based off The cognitive differences between men

and women by Bruce Goldman who talks a lot about why people react differently to situations.

However, later in this article, we see that it's not solely based on society. Some cognitive

differences between men and women are innate and it is something that cannot be controlled.

Cognitive differences between men and women can also be seen during emotional

situations. For example, when men and women break up they handle it very differently. Men are

programmed to immediately not show empathy. They are raised with the mindset that because

they are boys they cannot show emotion. This is incorrect because this is what society believes,

even though they don’t show emotion right away and make it seem like everything is fine they

tend to be hit with all the feelings months after the breakup. On the contrary, when it comes to

emotions women are capable of showing them better. Women are more likely to take things
more personally and react with an emotional response. In this example, after a breakup woman

tend to get everything out of their system because they are better at expressing themselves.

For the personal story, I would like to talk about a situation two of my friends were in, after

observing both of their behaviors I noticed a significant cognitive difference between the two.

Both of my friends had just taken a midterm for a microeconomics class. Both did not do as well

as they thought they would have done. Observing the way each one of them reacted I noticed that

my friend that was a guy was really calm and not so upset about it his grade while my friend that

was a girl reacted by breaking down everything she didn’t study and was just going through a lot

of emotions because of the bad grade. My other that was a boy processed the situation differently

by understanding that it was a bad grade and letting it go soon after that. Cognitive differences

between men and women specifically in academics is because the brains are different.

A personal experience that I have witnessed regarding the cognitive differences between

men and women was when I was at the dealership, this showed me a perfect example about how

men and women are treated differently and that affects their response. I noticed that there was a

rude salesman and there were two customers a man and a woman. Starting with the woman that

she came in and she had questions about what she wanted to purchase and what her concerns

were, however, the salesman treated her very poorly. He was rude to her when she would ask

questions; and talked to her like she did not know anything. Her reaction to that was feeling

really sad and confused. She left the dealership with no idea of what was happening and no idea

how to handle the situation because she felt very attacked and out of place. Her feelings were

noticeable because she had an uncomfortable look on her face and ended up just walking out of

the dealership. When the man walked into the dealership and the salesman was rude to him he

reacted by knowing exactly what to say and not feeling out of place. The man felt like he could
speak up whereas the women felt very belittled by the salesman and the situation. This shows the

differences between men and women when it comes to cognitive responses. Women are less

likely to feel comfortable in situations like a dealership because the salespeople automatically

assume that women are clueless in that department. They try to take advantage of that and

women do not know how to react to that. whereas a man in that situation even if he does not

know what he's talking about feels more power because that is just the way he has been raised by

society, to feel more superior in a situation even where he might be clueless like a dealership and

dealing with a rude salesman.

In this podcast, I wanted to get the message across that there are cognitive differences in

men and women that are seen at a very young age. However, there are many cognitive changes

that occur throughout the years of childhood development. Society plays a huge role in the

cognitive differences between a man and women. Men and women are raised differently and that

affects how they deal with situations in the future. This podcast specifically looked at situations,

emotions, and an experience that I’ve witnessed to show just how prominent these cognitive

differences are. In order to understand the brain and why certain people act the way they do

studying cognitive differences is a great start. I hope you all found this podcast information

important. This topic is really important to me because often times men and women are

generalized and its up to us to get rid of that gender barrier as well as understand why people

react the way they do so our response is better. Join me next time for a discussion on another

interesting topic, thank you for tuning in.

 Work Cited

 Goldman, Bruce “Https://Stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/How-Mens-and-Womens-

Brains-Are-Different.htm.” Men and Women Brains Are Different

 Nixon, Robin. “Matters of the Brain: Why Men and Women Are So

Different.” LiveScience,Purch, 1 May 2012, www.livescience.com/20011-brain-

cognition-gender-differences.html