The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that women, on average, are better than the opposite sex at episodic memory (the memory of autobiographical events).
Agneta Herlitz, the co-author of the study and a psychologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and her colleagues surveyed 30,000 individuals across 13 European countries. The data, which was collected in 2006, included people born between 1923 and 1957.
“As living conditions increase, so do men and women’s cognitive abilities — but women’s more than men’s,” Herlitz told The Verge.
Herlitz said researchers weren’t sure why women performed better, but says it could be because women generally start at a lower place in society, so they might get more out of societal improvements like education.
