This is the single largest gender survey that's ever been conducted. We've never been able to assess such a variety of people in so many different areas. What we want to know is how different our men and women. Generally speaking, all of the women had a much better memory for the emotional facts. Men were more things oriented. And women were more people oriented. Women like relationships, men like facts. We found that men are indeed interested in facts, but one thing they're more interested is sex. Which stands to reason? Men are, after all, much more promiscuous than women. Aren't they? How many partners have you had sexual intercourse with in the past five years? How old were you when you lost your virginity? We sent our researchers to find out just how much more promiscuous men really are. Our street survey found that on average, men reported 13 sexual partners, while women only managed 7, in line with other sex surveys. But hold on, who are all the men sleeping with? And the survey's about sexual behaviors and attitudes. The trouble with asking personal questions face to face is that you rarely get honest answers. How many sexual partners have you had? I think 25 or something like that, 20-25. I can count on both hands. You can. So 10. Ten. Either men are exaggerating or women are being economical with the truth. To find out what's going on we asked our volunteers to take a lie detector test. When they filled in our anonymous online survey, men and women did admit to having the same numbers of sexual partners. And what's more, nearly a quarter of both sexes admitted to having been unfaithful to a long-term partner. We also found that whatever their past experience, men predicted more than twice as many sexual partners in the future than women did. So even though men are distracted by the idea of sex they aren't more promiscuous than women after all. Of the half a million people who took part in our online survey, over 90% of the top scorers were women. Men were very much in second place. So in an unusual move we've asked neurologist Reuben Gerr to examine their brains. Here is the scanner, and what we will get is an image of your
brain anatomy, but more importantly we'll get images of what parts of the brain become active when you have to solve specific kinds of problems. A key part of empathy is recognizing how other people feel. We'll start doing the tests, and the first test is the test of emotion recognition. And you have to answer whether the face looks to you like a positive or a negative emotion. To me communication is mostly about the non-verbal, not what you actually say but what you're feeling. And I think Craig's not that in touch with his feelings enough. Actually maybe I've got perhaps more sensitivity in that area than I'm given credit for, and-and vice versa that Lizzie hasn't got quite as much strength in that area that she gives herself credit for. Well that's interesting. I just learned something else. If the scan reveals that Liz and Craig read other people's emotion differently then some of their misunderstandings might be instantly explained. The part of the brain that deals with emotions is right in the centre of the brain, right here. Liz shows a hefty activation, whereas Craig's brain shows no activation at all in this
emotional part of the brain. I'm not locking on whereas you went straight to the emotional part and you say, how would I have felt if I were looking like that. You immediately invoke the emotional part of your brain. Until recently scientists were reluctant to acknowledge any
sex differences. Partly because of history. In 1879 Gustav LeBon, the founding father of psychology announced that intelligent women are so rare that they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as for example, a gorilla with two heads. Consequently we men neglect them entirely. And that, 125 years ago, was medical fact. If I bring out a male brain and put it next to a female brain you can see there are very little differences in any of the structures on the surface of the brain. The only difference really between these two is their size. And, ah, in general female brains are a little bit smaller. So the explanation for this is that men tend to be bigger. And so this is in proportion to that difference in
body size. I don't think anyone's going to suggest that a small man is any less intelligent than a large man. Having said that, there have been a number of studies to suggest that certain areas of the brain might be slightly different in size. And the biggest areas of difference appear to be in language processing, and also in this part of the frontal lobe which is important in visio-spacial processing. And this might be the basis for some of the functional differences we see between men and women. Because women use both sides of the brain to process speech. Object-centered, partially deaf, unempathic, sex-obsessed fantasists is not how most of them would like to be remembered. Men are supposed to be go-getting, thrusting, and successful. So we're giving them a chance to shine. After all,
men love competition and they're great at driving. Our fingers have information about how much testosterone and how much estrogen we've been exposed to in the womb. So the longer one's ring finger relative to one's index finger, the more testosterone you've had. And that testosterone has an effect on the brain, and on the body. If a boy has a large amount of testosterone before birth he's likely to be born with a very efficient
heart and vascular system. So the longer one's ring finger relative to one's index finger, the faster one can run. Professor Manning has agreed to do one further, more radical test to see if finger length can be used to determine our volunteers' brain sex - how male or female their brains are. If I arrange you along this line in terms of the amount of testosterone you've had before birth that has no
implications for sexuality, but is has some implications about your very, very early
brain organization. Our fingers may provide a record of testosterone in the womb because the genes that trigger its production also determine finger growth. In general the men and women performed to type. The men are at the male end and the women are at the female end. Liz and Craig are at opposite ends. But there's one exception. Grace's fingers put her well into the male domain. In our survey of half a million people, the biggest difference between men and women was in visuo-spacial tasks.
