'Women cleverer than men but underplay their intelligence'

Women are cleverer than men but they seem to underplay their intelligence, a leading psychologist claimed on Tuesday.

Professor Adrian Furnham of the University College of London said that according to an analysis, men appear to be more confident, not brighter.

Pessorrof Furnham analysed the results of 25 studies of sex differences in IQ. His overview backs the idea of what is known as the 'male hubris, female humility' effect.

The studies show that women tend to give significantly lower estimates than men about their own intelligence – about five IQ points - while men tend to overestimate their brain power.

"Whether men are brighter is another matter," Professor Furnham said, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.

What is surprising, Professor Furnham said, is that both men and women tend to think their grandfathers are brighter than grandmothers, fathers brighter than mothers and sons brighter than daughters.

This difference in perceived IQ matches the estimate of the actual difference between how the two sexes score in IQ tests, which is only three to five IQ points, said Professor Furnham.

He said that there is general agreement that men and women do differ in specialised features of intellectual development.

Men excel in spatial awareness, which underpins navigation and numerical skills. Women do better in emotional intelligence and language development.

They develop larger vocabularies earlier, use more complex linguistic constructions and read better Another view is that the perceived difference between men and women rests on the distribution of IQ: both men and women tend to have the same average IQ but there are more very dim men, and a corresponding number of super bright ones to compensate.

"Men are at the top and the bottom - which the universities have noticed for a long time," said Professor Furnham.