Psychological Research (2010) 74:429–435 DOI 10.1007/s00426-009-0267-6 123 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sex diVerences in parking are aVected by biological and social factors Claudia C. Wolf · Sebastian Ocklenburg · Beyza Ören · Cordula Becker · Andrea Hofstätter · Christa Bös · Markus Popken · Truls Thorstensen · Onur Güntürkün Received: 4 September 2009 / Accepted: 19 November 2009 / Published online: 10 December 2009  Springer-Verlag 2009 Abstract The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although labo- ratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underly- ing mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at diVerent parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women. Performance is related to mental rota- tion skills and self-assessment in beginners, but only to self-assessment in more experienced drivers. We assume that, due to diVerential feedback, self-assessment incremen- tally replaces the controlling inXuence of mental rotation, as parking is trained with increasing experience. Results suggest that sex diVerences in spatial cognition persist in real-life situations, but that socio-psychological factors modulate the biological causes of sex diVerences. Introduction Numerous psychological studies prove the existence of sex diVerences in certain cognitive abilities (Halpern 2000; Kimura 1999; Kimura 2002). Although performances of the sexes overlap to a large degree, women tend to outperform men in some aspects of verbal cognition such as phonologi- cal retrieval in the letter Xuency task (Crossley, D’Arcy, Rawson 1997; Hines 1990), and verbal memory (Chipman & Kimura 1998; Kramer, Delis, Daniel 1988). Men, on the other hand, obtain higher average scores in some spatial tasks, with largest and most stable diVerences being found for the Mental Rotation Test (Linn & Petersen 1985; Masters & Sanders 1993; Voyer, Voyer, Bryden 1995). In the typi- cally applied paper–pencil version of this test (Peters et al. 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse 1978), subjects must identify similar versions of abstract 3-D cube-Wgure drawings (Shepard & Metzler 1971), which are shown from diVerent perspectives. Women and men seem to use diVerent strategies when solving the task, with men tending to use visual–spatial, and women verbal or analytical strategies (Bethell-Fox & Shepard 1988; Pezaris & Casey 1991; Schultz 1991). As for other spatial abilities, mental rotation skills are subject to training eVects, with repeated training increasing performance (Lohmann & Nichols 1990; Peters et al. 1995; Wright, Thompson, Ganis, Newcombe, Kosslyn 2008). Although it is the common goal of researchers to under- stand human cognition as it occurs under natural circum- stances, most theories about sex diVerences in cognitive abilities—including mental rotation skills—have been established from results obtained in controlled, standardised, C. C. Wolf and S. Ocklenburg contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00426-009-0267-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. C. C. Wolf (&) · S. Ocklenburg · B. Ören · C. Becker · O. Güntürkün Department of Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany e-mail: claudia.c.wolf@ruhr-uni-bochum.de A. Hofstätter · C. Bös · T. Thorstensen (&) EFS Unternehmensberatung GesmbH, Ungargasse 59-61, 1030 Vienna, Austria e-mail: tthorstensen@efs.co.at M. Popken Audi AG, Auto-Union-Straße, 85045 Ingolstadt, Germany