14 DAY TRIAL // Since an early age, women are exposed to the idea that their spatial skills are inferior to those of men, and in many instances there are. But that doesn't mean that the situation cannot be addressed. A new study shows this can be achieved by boosting women's confidence in themselves.
A healthy dose of confidence was proven to work wonders in a new series of experiments, say experts at the University of Warwick. Spatial abilities are used in everything from map-reading and orientation to parking a car, PsychCentral reports.
During the study, women were asked to conduct a standard 3D mental rotation task, while investigators were manipulating their confidence levels. It was indeed determined that higher confidence levels led directly to better results, in the absence of other factors to influence the research.
“We wanted to see why that was so we manipulated people’s confidence in our experiments with spatial tasks, and it does seem that confidence is a key factor in how well women perform at this kind of task,” says University of Warwick psychology researcher Dr. Zachary Estes.