Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Romance vs. STEM

August 16, 2011
Inside Higher Ed

When Lora Park was a graduate student in psychology at the University of Michigan, she used to hang out with a group of women in the physical sciences. And Parkhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif noticed that some of these exceptionally bright, academically successful women would hide their accomplishments from men they would meet, afraid of scaring them off.

Watching these scenes, Park wondered if women fear that they can't excel in math and science fields and also experience love. Park is now an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is about to publish a series of research projects she led, along with Buffalo graduate students, that suggest that when college-age women think about romance, they become less interested in studying STEM fields. College-age men, however, can get interested in romance without any impact on their engagement with math and science.

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