I read Delusions of Gender recently and it's full of fascianting studies like this.

Another example: men score signifantly better than women in tests where you have to mentally rotate objects. But if you give everyone a preamble explaining this is an important skill in fashion design and interior decoration, the men's performance suddenly drops.

When you ask people to self-assess how empathic they are: i.e. how well they can read emotions, women rate themselves as much better than men do. But when you study how well people actually do (by putting two subjects in a room on a pretext, secretly videoing them, later getting them to record their own emotions and guess the other's) men and women score about the same.

Aaargh. Fascinating. It's too early in the morning for psychological theory.

I wonder if there's some simple way I can apply this in the classroom.

How interesting. I wouldn't have predicted this. Maybe I'll try using the values-affirmation writing exercise for my students before their state regents. Can't hurt.