by Cesare Peccarisi
Confirmation from some research on female police officers driving police cars and on mothers who leave work late to pick up their children from school, but who always arrive on time
In Italy, women police officers, who joined the state police in 1959, are now almost 15 thousand and many of them drive helicopters and police cars like their male colleagues, carrying out their service with great professionalism. According to various research, women’s spatial orientation abilities, which are fundamental for example in chasing a car of fleeing criminals or in reaching a bank where a robbery is taking place as quickly as possible, are lower than those of men, but one study published in Scientific Report by a group of Australian and Swiss researchers, has shown that if instead the woman is motivated by a state of stress as often happens to those who drive a steering wheel, her orientation skills multiply and have nothing to envy of those of a male policeman.
The stress compass
The same happens to any mother who, perhaps leaving work late, has to rush to pick up her children who are about to leave school or nursery: her route choices are impeccable and she always arrives on time. The researchers, led by Victor Schinazi who works at both the University of Zurich and Bond University in Australia, compared 69 subjects of both sexes aged between 19 and 36 years of whom 29 were women, who were divided in a control group (13) and in one (16) to undergo a test lasting approximately one hour. All received an initial compensation of 40 Swiss francs each.
Cognitive map
A bit like what is now customary to do with Google-map or with the car navigator to find an unknown street, everyone was shown the map of a virtual city on the computer in which their position was highlighted and the one to be reached within 16 minutes with a route of their choice. In psychology this process is called an allocentric cognitive map, which refers to elements external to us and consists in the mental creation of a path without actually completing it.
Learning
For every second lost in completing the course, participants paid a monetary penalty deducted from the compensation promised for the study, and this already placed them in a situation of initial stress. In building their cognitive map, women took 40% longer than men to identify reference points. In particular, those in the control group were slower than both the males and females in the test group. All the females were more cautious in learning the test and spent more time consulting the map, but the females, overcome by the stress of the test, moved more directly towards the goal, like the males.
The heart doesn’t lie
In essence, stress leads women to perform in a masculine way. Physiological evaluations also confirmed the positive effect of stress on women: in fact, an increase in heart rate was recorded in those who carried out the test which was not however correlated to the time left to complete it, as if to say that stress activates the when it is necessary to reach the goal, but the thought of having no more time available did not make them anxious and did not alter their heart rate, in the same way as males who generally do not allow themselves to be impressed that much.
The deputy commissioner Lolita Lobosco of the Bari flying squad, protagonist of the successful television series played by Luisa Ranieri, may have her heart beating wildly while chasing you, but she will reach you like Al Pacino in Serpico.
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February 10, 2024 (modified February 10, 2024 | 07:27)
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