this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Am I dreaming? I thought this whole thing was settled as science from more than one study quite some time ago.
Males tend to navigate by direction and distance, and females tend to navigate by landmarks (subject to to variation of the individual, everyone is different and we're all special, etc etc etc). Each gender is more capable at their style of navigation than the other is; women can navigate better in certain environments because they're genuinely better at recognizing and remembering landmarks. Men's navigation is better in unfamiliar environments, but has no built-in error correction until you arrive or not at the destination, which is why men "never admit they're lost" in stereotype, because their gender-preferred style of navigation doesn't include the concept of "lost." They could be way off their course and never realize it, whereas women will "feel lost" if they don't recognize the place they're in or feel that there's a solid plan for what landmarks are coming next and etc.
There are physiological differences too; males have more iron in some part of their head and it's theorized that that's used to give them a certain weak sense of compass directions through magnetism.
Right? Did I just make all this up? I genuinely thought this was verified through scientific studies as of like a long time ago. Maybe I hallucinated it all, or maybe the whole thing was judged as impossible because men and women have to be the same, and got flushed into some kind of memory hole.
I swear every time science comes along and tells me this is what men do be, I’m always the opposite.
I navigate entirely by landmarks (Well Google Maps these days).
I believe street names are part of the "male method", so Google Maps uses that method.
If it said "Turn right at the intersection with the big police station", then it'd be the "landmark method".
I mean, landmarks don't make much sense to use on a 2D, birds eye view map
It could with businesses. Turn left past the McDonalds. Keep going until you pass the empty plot on your right, etc.