A family hikes in Mount Lassen Volcanic Park in California.
New research suggests that men are generally better at navigating than women.
As for why men can't seem to ask for directions, however, that will have to await another study. The findings add a biological counterpart to prior research that indicated men and women tend to use different strategies to navigate. The volunteers pushed buttons to move their virtual selves left, right or ahead. In the real world, that might be like trying to find a specific place in an unfamiliar city, said neurologist Dr. Matthias Riepe of the University of Ulm in Germany. The men got out of the maze in an average of 2 minutes and 22 seconds, vs. an average of 3 minutes and 16 seconds for the women.