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Wahrheit und Irrtum in der Geschlechterpsychologie (English: Truths and Errors in Gender Psychology) is a book written by Dr. Mathilde Vaerting in 1923 describing the causes of errors that are made whenever psychologists attempt to compare women and men in the study of gender psychology.

The book is divided into six parts, that all comprise different chapters. The first part deals with the supremacy of males as a cause for errors within the field of gender psychology. The second part introduces the idea of sexual influence as a bias within between gender comparisons. These two causes are then taken together in the third part, which discusses fallacies that came about due to the combination of supremacy and sexual influence. Parts four and five focus on the differences in the upbringing of girls and boys and how these differences are noticeable in the errors made in research. The last part focuses on the qualification of men and women to reign.

Content
Dr. Vaerting begins her book with the discussion of male supremacy and how it influences the findings within gender psychological research. She explains that whenever researchers compare men and women they try to minimize similarities while at the same time maximizing the differences between the genders. Additionally results of women are always interpreted under the assumption that they are cognitively inferior to men. In this context Vaerting introduces the term Herrscheranalogieschluss, which represents the idea that if something is found to be very difficult for the ruling population (in this case men) it is thought to be impossible for the rest of the population which already is inferior (in this case women). An example that is introduced to show the effect of Herrscheranalogieschluss within gender psychology is the fact that girls were not taught mathematics since the boys already had a hard time studying it. Another fact that the author emphasizes throughout the whole book is the absence of clear evidence for physiological differences between men and women, that is not based on wrong interpretations of experimental outcomes.

The second part of the book focuses mainly on the subjectivity of the researcher when interpreting outcomes. To explain the missing objectivity the idea of sexual influence is introduced to account for the fact that one gender is unable to compare two genders objectively. Sexual influence arises whenever we communicate with our own gender as well as the opposite gender. Whenever we communicate with our own gender, our psyche shows itself sexually neutral, whereas when we communicate with the opposite gender, our psyche becomes very much gender emphasized. This effect of sexual influence is then discussed within emotionality and compassion. Especially the view that women have more compassion was traditionally used as a reason why women are not suited to work as a judge. The author shows that this assumption of higher compassion of women is wrong, since this is only the case whenever women interact with men. She then claims that compassion is mainly caused by sexual influence meaning that humans show more compassion whenever they interact with the opposite gender and less compassion when they interact with the same gender. Vaerting combines the the causes of male supremacy and sexual influence in the third chapter to discuss fallacies in research of everyday human behavior, such as diligence, sense of shame, female friendship and many more.

The last three parts focus mainly on the differences in the upbringing of girls and boys. Vaerting especially focuses on the fact that in school boys are only taught by men whereas girls are taught by women as well as men. This difference in educational upbringing causes girls to experience sexual influence a lot sooner than boys. In her opinion this difference also needs to be taken into account when interpreting gender psychological research data. Vaerting finishes the book off with a discussion about the qualification of men and women to rule and govern. One of her critiques on the view that only men are able to run and govern is the fact that men ascribe themselves the characteristic of being egoistic while women are seen as altruistic. In Vaertings opinion this ascription makes males therefore unsuited to function as a judge whereas females would be well suited.

Mathilde Vaerting’s experience as female researcher
During the first world war women were forced to break out of their traditional role as a housewife and started to take over jobs that were previously only done by men. When the first world war ended Germany was faced with a high unemployment rate, famines and other crises. However improvements were observed after 1924 when the so-called Roaring Twenties started to bring an upswing in arts, culture and science. Mathilde Vaerting herself was a trained teacher in mathematics, physics and chemistry and was only the second woman in Germany who received a chair of education at the University of Jena where she conducted research herself. Within her research she held the view that any attention paid to gender reduces the individual which was seen very critical by the fellow researchers. In 1930 Ludwig Plate published a lampoon against her accusing her of hiding feminism under the cloak of science. After the Nazi dictatorship started to arise in Germany in the 1933 Vaerting lost her chair of education and received a ban of publication in order to make sure she could not continue her research.

Weblinks

 * Porträt auf der Homepage der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena