Here's why science claims men are better at Scrabble and what it means for real life

Posted at 9:16 AM, Sep 05, 2017
and last updated 2017-09-06 09:22:35-04

If Uncle Ralph always seems to dominate the family Scrabble match at the holidays, there may be a scientific reason why, according to The Times of London.

"Women are far less willing to waste their time honing a largely pointless skill," The Times wrote, citing a University of Miami study recently published in the journal Psychological Research.

"Females and males gain roughly equivalent benefits from domain activities in Scrabble and are roughly equivalently able to succeed in the domain," the study's authors wrote, noting that males still perform at a higher level in professional Scrabble tournaments anyway.

Where they differ is that women often play Scrabble to enjoy it rather than to analyze it, as men do more frequently, wrote Stylist.

The study claims that researching gender differences in Scrabble techniques could help us better understand the glass ceiling in professions where performance is based on a supervisor's subjective evaluation.

"This paper shows that a gender gap can arise in a domain with very few barriers to entry and where the common expectation is that women should prosper," the study's authors wrote. 

Read more on the original study here.