Secrets of the Male Mind

Secrets of the Male Mind

By Molly Edmonds

In the 2000 film "What Women Want," Mel Gibson played an ad executive who gained the ability to hear women's thoughts. This superpower proved helpful on the job with marketing products like pantyhose, mascara and nail polish to women, particularly when it came to stealing his female co-workers' ideas. He discovered his ability to eavesdrop on women's ideas more troubling when it came to his personal life, however, when he learned that many of the women in his life found him to be a shallow, superficial jerk. After his burst of insight into women's innermost desires and dreams, Gibson's character learned how to treat women better.

We can't help but wonder what the movie would have been like if the main character had been a woman getting the chance to explore the male brain. Women have spent countless hours agonizing over what a guy is thinking, and sales of women's magazines and self-help books attest to the desire to understand the enigma that is the male mind. Why doesn't he answer my texts? How can he live in such a pigsty? How long must we date before he'll drop the L-word?

We'll probably never learn the exact number of hours a woman should wait before calling a guy or whether he prefers to be the pursuer or the pursued -- men are too diverse for such grand statements, and besides, it may not be any fun to have men completely figured out. The good news is that scientists are gaining more insight into the male brain all the time. Are they finding that the same old sexist stereotypes hold true, or are there some pleasant surprises in store?

1  Men Really Can't Remember What You Wore on Your First Date

Women don't just remember their wedding anniversaries. Many women also remember the date they first kissed the man who would become their husband, what they were wearing on their first date with him and what song was playing in the restaurant where he proposed. Men often get in trouble when they can't remember these kinds of details.

Researchers have found that men and women use different parts of their brains to form memories, and it turns out that the emotional center of the brain plays a large role in women's memories. When women are affected emotionally by something, be it a photograph in the newspaper or a fight with a boyfriend, they are apt to remember every single detail. Men, on the other hand, tend to have more visual and "tactical" memories, which means they easily remember how to get from one place to another or the layout of a room, yet have trouble recalling a loved one's birthday [source: Gray]. And women may need to give men a hand at parties -- women are better than men at recalling faces, particularly female faces [sources: Branan, Association of Psychological Science]. One theory posits that women are particularly good at remembering pretty girls' faces -- after all, they may be potential threats. As it turns out, a woman's male companion may not remember that pretty face at all.

Men's poor memories dog them throughout their life, unfortunately. In a study presented in 2008 to the American Academy of Neurology, researchers announced that men were one-and-a-half times more likely to have mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia, than women [source: American Academy of Neurology].

2: Men Don't Listen (the Same Way Women Do)

The idea that we use only 10 percent of our brain is a persistent myth. What's not a myth, however, is that men use just one side of their brain to listen, while women use both sides. When men listen, the left side of the brain, which is associated with language, is activated, while both sides activate when a woman listens [source: BBC].

Listening is but one task in which women seem to use their interconnected sides of the brain in ways that men don't. This doesn't imply that women are better listeners -- it just indicates that men and women listen differently. Because women are using more language processing centers, they may be able to multitask when it comes to conversing; they can surf the Web and chat at the same time. Men, on the other hand, may need to focus solely on the conversation at hand to process it, which may account for the numerous magazine articles that advise not bringing up a touchy subject during the big game.

Research from the University of Sheffield in England also indicates that men process women's voices differently than they do men's voices, perhaps because the women's voices are more complex and convey more information. When men listen to women's voices, it activates a part of the brain that processes the sound of music, but when they listen to men's voices, it activates a part of the brain that's associated with imagery [source: Epstein]. Women's voices have more complex sound frequencies, but don't let a man use that as an excuse for not listening. It just means that you shouldn't assume that your guy has heard and understood the exact same thing that you just did.

As for who does more talking in a relationship? That's something we'll address a little later in this article.

3: Men Aren't as Empathetic as Women

In general, men read less fiction than women, and they rarely find themselves hooked on soap operas. That may be because men frequently test as less empathetic than women [source: Eliot]. Without empathy, or the ability to put oneself in another person's shoes, men may have a harder time investing in fictional characters.

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has described the male brain as one that's wired for "systemizing," in comparison to the female brain, which is characterized by "empathizing" [source: Kanazawa]. Rather than figuring out how another person feels, men tend to see another person as a machine that is ordered by defined rules. When others aren't predictable or easy to analyze, it's harder for men to determine what to do next. For this reason, Baron-Cohen has linked "extreme male brains" to autism, which is characterized by an inability to understand what others are thinking or feeling.

There is likely an evolutionary reason for this. Men, in their roles as hunter and protector, would have needed the ability to coldly kill animals and people in order to feed and defend their family. Women, as caregivers, would have needed the ability to nurture their children and get along with nearby families [source: Kanazawa].

Now, such distinctions may be wired into our brains. Mirror neurons may play a role in empathy. As the name implies, these neurons cause us to mirror actions and emotions that are presented to us. If our friend looks sad, mirror neurons would cause us to feel sad and wonder what was wrong. Studies have shown that women have more sensitive mirror neurons than men, which is probably why they're better at picking up emotional cues and detecting when something is wrong [source: Weiner]. So if you're sending a man what you consider to be glaring signals that something is wrong, cut him some slack. He'll need more than withering looks and body language to receive an error message.

There does seem to be one instance when men's mirror neurons work just fine, and you might not like it.