Woo Begins in the Womb « Bruce M. Hood
While I don't disagree with the scientific findings in this post (that the longer your ring finger the more testosterone you have) I do disagree with Bruce Hood's opinion that more women believe in "woo." That is not my experience with woo-woos.
I don't follow ghost phenomena much, so I won't include that, but certainly in Cryptozooloy and Ufology you will find far more men than women involved.
Now I don't have any scientific methods that lead me to believe there are more male believers than female, but I do know that last time I checked 80% of my facebook friends were men, nearly all of them believers in "woo" and most of the people (easily 95%) that email me about their experiences are men. Needless to say because it is obvious, but most researchers in Cryptozoology and Ufology are men.
If I am out at a party where I don't know many people and it is found out that I write and blog about UFOs it is the men that are most interested, not the women. In fact, the women seem to consider it a "manly" topic, like scifi or rebuilding car engines. The few men that roll their eyes and walk off normally find me when nobody is around and admit that they have seen a UFO or they know someone (that they believe) that saw one.
Even my local UFO group, which is pretty evenly split, normally has at least 60% men.
This is what I think -- high testosterone probably doesn't make anyone less likely to believe in "woo," but it may make them less likely to admit it.
What a great idea for a post Lesley.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree and you're right, the larger (and it is much larger) majority of UFO/alien woo wowsers are men. It's real obvious (by the numbers) in comments on blogs and websites. As well I witness this in YouTube especially when the topic is UFO or alien.
I find both Crypto and UFOs to be more rough and tumble, which is why I think more men are interested. As well, the UFOs have that "fast" jets, cars, motorcycle manly thing going on too, which makes it more appealing to them.
Crypto men I believe came along in the early days of comics, which makes for an older crypto crowd, which is what crypto is. Not too many youngins in crypto.
However, I believe that woo goes to the women in regard to all subjects on the topic of paranormal. Women are more in touch with those things of the paranormal more so than men.
Certainly there are many men in the field but if we're talking John Q Public and not just paranormal community figures, then it's predominantly women sitting there waiting for their next ghost hunting program.
Its true that there is a greater interest in UFOs and conspiracy theories among males but females are more likely to believe in spiritual woo. If you read SuperSense, I explain this as an inclination towards intuitive misconceptions.
ReplyDeleteBest
Bruce
Atrueoriginal - you are probably right about the ghost people. I don't watch many ghost shows and I know nothing about the ratio of men and women. I do know there are far more men on ghost shows though.
ReplyDeleteSorry Bruce, I didn't know which woos you were referring to and since I am so used to being considered one - I assumed it was us that believe in unidentified flying objects, along with the others.
I know almost nothing about the spiritual woos, but I do know there are a LOT of male "life coaches" and other such things because they always try to friend me on twitter.
You can always send me a copy of your book. :)
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Chauvinism seems to qualify itself on the one at the expense of the other, always, it seems.
ReplyDeleteWomen, it may be said, are more pragmatically open-minded, I think. This is that which may be falsely attributed as being predisposed to "woo"...
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