That's What She Said by Joanne Lipman

Author:Joanne Lipman [Lipman, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Women’s brains (like the one on the right in the picture above), on average, had multiple connections between left and right hemispheres, which control logic and intuition. The female brain map looked like an especially intense version of the kid’s game Cat’s Cradle. That cross-hemisphere wiring suggests women are able to engage and connect to various parts of the brain simultaneously.

But men’s brains (as seen on the left), on average, were wired in an entirely different manner, with connections going from front to back. There was almost no connection between left brain and right brain. This suggests that on average men are predisposed to focus on a single task at a time.

Her findings showed with startling clarity why so many studies have found women are better multitaskers than men. “What it means is that while I’m talking to you, I can work on my laptop, and finish a project, and think about which pair of shoes to buy in the evening,” as Dr. Verma put it to me.

The two types of brains are “complementary. It shows that the best outcome is if they (men and women) work together and complement their skills,” Dr. Verma said.

At the same time, though, the different wiring also suggests that “men and women are perceiving each other differently. Our perceptions of the environment are different. It means that everything will affect you differently. How I react to things will be different than how a man reacts. People should accept there will be differences.”

* * *

IN THIS DIGITAL age, the disconnect in how we interpret one another is that much more fraught. There are even more opportunities for misunderstandings and crossed communication wires. For the most illuminating research on that score, we can thank Enron.

In late 2001, one of the biggest financial scandals in history blew up when Enron, a once-mighty energy giant, collapsed in spectacular fashion. The Houston company had been hailed for its brilliance in oil trading, its top executives celebrated in glowing magazine profiles and rewarded with massive payouts.

Glitz and glamour and over-the-top spending were its credo. Its chief executive, Kenneth Lay, bought himself seven homes, including an extravagant $10 million Aspen showpiece that was one of four he owned in the pricey ski-resort town. The company set aside $1.5 million for an employee holiday party, and not once but twice rented a live elephant for internal meetings. The spending free-for-all seemed limitless—right up until a whistleblower exposed the enterprise as a massive financial fraud.

In the aftermath, government investigators swooped in. Among other evidence, they gathered 600,000 internal email chains. It was a treasure trove for journalists, who descended with glee in search of juicy tidbits, like the $590,000 of company cash spent on a sculptured light switch.

More than fifteen hundred miles away, Andrew McCallum was celebrating for a different reason. He’s a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies social networks. He was trying to learn how groups of people communicate by email. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to give him access to their accounts.

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