Preface

Summary

In 1996 there was a timid knock at my office door. It was one of our final year undergraduates seeking a tutorial with me to discuss an idea for her dissertation, an empirical piece of research conducted independently by our students under the guidance of a supervisor. The student in question was Meyrav Menaged and (as per instructions) she had come along armed with several research papers that had given her some possible ideas for this important project. The papers were rather outdated, and concerned the possible differences in circulating hormone levels between heterosexuals and homosexuals. I read the papers with interest and not a little scepticism; her proposal sounded worthy of pursuit, but my main reservation was the lack of psychology (she was after all studying a psychology degree). I asked her to reconsider her plan and include something of psychological merit. She seemed fine with that suggestion and off she went. Several days later she returned with a pile of other papers, some addressing cognitive differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals, and others reporting links between circulating testosterone and certain kinds of spatial ability – a project was born. She would focus on cognitive differences taking into account sexual orientation and circulating hormone levels (testosterone).

The first bit was easy for me: I had taught a module on sex differences and was well acquainted with the literature, different theories, ‘best’ kinds of tasks to use, etc. The latter issue was more of a problem: how the hell were we going to measure testosterone?