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Approaching behavior reduces gender differences in the mental rotation performance

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Abstract

In this study, we investigated if the enactment of an approaching or avoiding behavior influences the mental rotation performance. Thirty-five females and thirty males completed a chronometric mental rotation task either in an approaching or in an avoiding condition while manipulating their arm position. The results showed a significant influence of this embodied behavior dependent on gender and task difficulty. The approaching condition caused no gender difference in reaction times and a reduced gender difference in accuracy for the most difficult tasks, while the avoidance condition produced the well-known gender differences in mental rotation for both reaction time and accuracy. We demonstrate that an approaching behavior improves the visual-spatial performance of females and gives a hint that the role of motivation must be investigated in more detail in further research.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Daniel Lottes, Katharina Preischl und Saskia Venus for their help during data acquisition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sport Science, University of Regensburg, Universitystreet 31, 93053, Regensburg, Germany

    Petra Jansen & Sandra Kaltner

  2. Institute of Cognition and Sport Games Research, German University of Sport Science, Cologne, Germany

    Daniel Memmert

Authors
  1. Petra Jansen
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  2. Sandra Kaltner
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  3. Daniel Memmert
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Correspondence to Petra Jansen.

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All three authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standard of the national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Jansen, P., Kaltner, S. & Memmert, D. Approaching behavior reduces gender differences in the mental rotation performance. Psychological Research 81, 1192–1200 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0817-7

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