Remember, remember, the 19th of Movember

In an effort to raise awareness of men’s health issues, men are being encouraged to grow moustaches during the current month of ‘Movember’, coinciding with International Men’s Day on the 19th of the month.

In addition to specifically male medical conditions, this charity event also addresses the issues of men tending both to adopt poor health behaviours, and to avoid seeking medical care, in comparison with women.

From a social constructionist perspective, such activities can be seen as a way of doing ‘being masculine’, since they are ‘known’ to be bound to the ‘male’ gender category.

By dismissing their health care needs, men are constructing gender. When a man brags, ”I haven’t been to a doctor in years”, he is simultaneously describing a health practice and situating himself in a masculine arena. Similarly, men are demonstrating dominant norms of masculinity when they refuse to take sick leave from work, when they insist that they need little sleep, and when they boast that drinking does not impair their driving.

(Courtenay, 2000)

This contrasts with the more traditional psychological view that these behaviours are inevitable since they are driven by some internal factor related to biological sex.

Official ‘Movember’ website

Official International Men’s Day website

Lyon, A. C. (2009). Masculinities, Femininities, Behaviour and Health

Courtenay, W. H. (2000). Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men’s well-being: a theory of gender and health. Social Science & Medicine, 50(10), 1385-1401

When Gut Feelings Trump Conscious Thought

At almost every major sports event there will be commentators giving their opinions on the predicted winners, losers, or favorites. People tend to give commentators due credibility for their knowledge of the game and sometimes experience. For the layperson however it may be better not to give the event much thought. This is true when making predictions on your own. In a recent study, Dijksterhuis and colleagues (2009) asked participants to make predictions about random football matches two weeks prior to the event. Three groups were used in this investigation. Those who were asked to guess performed the worse. Those who were asked to think about their answers performed better. But the group that performed the best was the group who thought unconsciously.

One exception however is that making predictions unconsciously without prior knowledge is not recommended. The participants who performed the best in the investigation also perceived themselves as relatively knowledgeable.  Those who made conscious decisions with relative knowledge are said to not give proper value to relevant information, hence why they performed worse. People who are essentially asked to guess tend to do worse overall. So next time there’s a football, or sports match for that matter, it might be better to not give it much thought about whom will win.

Read More: Football info

Read more: Sports commentary

Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M.W., van der Leij, A., van Baaren, R.B. (2009) Predicting soccer matches after unconscious and conscious thought as a function of expertise.