Why Half of Men Think They Could Safely Land a Plane in an Emergency

Or: how gender plays a crucial role in how we estimate our abilities

If you were asked to safely land a passenger aeroplane in an emergency situation, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control, do you feel confident you could do it?

I’m positively certain I could not.

But if you think you could manage it, you’re hardly alone.

According to a YouGov survey published earlier this year, which asked over 20,000 American adults the same question, nearly one-third feel very or somewhat confident they could do it.

And while it’s true that there have been a few instances in which a passenger indeed saved the day when the pilot became unresponsive — although only when it comes to incidents taking place in rather small aircrafts — and that flying increasingly relies on automated systems, this number does seem to be grossly overinflated, doesn’t it?

In a recent article published by the Conversation, experts in aviation made it pretty clear: the chances of a person with no prior training guiding everyone to a smooth touchdown, even with air traffic control’s guidance, are close to… zero. Even if you’ve previously played one of the virtual reality and flight simulation games — like Microsoft’s Flight Simulator or X-Plane — you will also almost certainly not be able to land an actual plane in real life.

Contrary to what seems like a popular opinion, flying a plane and getting everyone on it back on the ground in one piece isn’t a piece of cake and requires years of studying and practice.

But, unsurprisingly, overconfidence in those skills isn’t exactly the same across genders.

Gender difference in estimated abilities seems to be quite common

Among male respondents of the YouGov survey, 20% felt ‘very confident’ and 26% ‘somewhat confident’ they could safely land a passenger plane with air traffic control’s guidance.

Yup, the confidence levels rise to nearly 50% when you just consider men.

Meanwhile, only 7% of female respondents felt ‘very confident’ they could land the aircraft, with a further 13% saying they’re ‘somewhat confident.’ Most of them (55%) admitted they’re ‘not at all confident.’

I went down a rabbit hole of similar surveys conducted by YouGov in recent years and found this to be a repeating pattern. Men are almost always more confident in their skills and knowledge, whether it comes to performing the Heimlich manoeuvre, performing CPR, naming all 50 states of America or knowing what Cinco de Mayo celebrates.

Some of the few exceptions where it’s women who responded with more confidence — but only slightly — included questions on knowing how to properly cook a turkey and… correctly fold a fitted sheet.

Of course, in some cases, self-estimates of our abilities can be accurate. But in others, they aren’t. And gender often seems to play a role in predicting whether they’ll be exaggerated or not.

I recently came across a study led by University College London researchers that looked into this very topic and analysed self-estimates of the navigation skills of over 380,000 people of different genders and ages from 46 countries around the world. (It’s also the first one done at such a large scale.)

The participants were first asked to play a mobile game called Sea Hero Quest, which tests wayfinding abilities and was explicitly designed for neuroscience research, and then to estimate their skills.

And as could probably be expected, after comparing self-estimated abilities with actual performance, the researchers found that people in cultures that rank high on ‘masculinity’ — for instance, in Germany, Austria and the UK — had a a general tendency to rate their abilities higher than their performance would warrant. Meanwhile, people in places that rank lower on the ‘masculinity’ scale — like Nordic and East Asian countries — underestimated their skills despite consistently performing well.

In addition to uncovering a link between cultural values and cognitive performance, the study also found that men were almost two times more likely than women to rate themselves as very good navigators. And in countries that put a high value on masculinity, they were significantly more likely to hold overinflated opinions of their navigating skills.

This was particularly true among the group of older men — between 60 and 70 years old — who, despite having an overall much poorer actual wayfinding performance, rated it more favourably than… the youngest men in the sample, who were between 19 and 29 years old.

Well, it’s obviously not surprising that their performance was poor, as navigational skills always decline with age.

But neither is the fact that there was such a discrepancy between some men’s self-estimates and actual performance.

Male hubris, female humility

This is actually a common phenomenon: men tend to overestimate their abilities while women underestimate theirs or, at least, remain a tad bit less optimistic.

Probably the most well-known — and most commonly studied — example is the self-estimates of intelligence. Men are consistently found to overestimate their intelligence quotient (IQ) scores more often than women, which also seems to be related to how ‘masculine’ a person acts. And the more they do, the higher the likelihood they’ll have an inflated intellectual self-image.

This dynamic has been observed in many science classrooms as well. Men tend to overestimate their intelligence in STEM courses, while women underestimate theirs.

Over two decades ago, psychologist Adrian Furnham termed this effect the ‘male hubris, female humility’ problem. And in a nutshell, that still seems to be what’s causing it: gendered disparity in confidence.

Society often teaches men to be wildly overconfident, and even when that belief is entirely misguided, because confidence is considered one of the essential ‘masculine’ traits. Meanwhile, women are taught to be humble and always make themselves smaller, which is more aligned with submissiveness and, by extension, our ideals of traditional ‘femininity’.

It also doesn’t help that for quite some time, women were believed to be mentally, emotionally and intellectually inferior to men, which was supported by the claim that our wombs render us insane — hence the term ‘female hysteria,’ originating in ancient Greece — or the fact that we have slightly smaller skulls. (Right. By that logic, we should let elephants or sperm whales lead our world as theirs are much bigger than ours.)

Today, we do know there are no significant gender differences in IQ, though it bears noting that the accuracy and ethics of those tests have been widely called into question. Similarly, if you dig into modern research — especially in the field of neuroscience — on all the other gender myths like ‘men are better at spatial tasks’ or ‘women just don’t have what it takes to do science,’ they collapse faster than you can say ‘women in STEM.’

We’re likely far more similar than we’re different when it comes to our abilities.

But it’s taking a while for society to catch up to the idea.

Meanwhile, gender myths continue to have us in a stranglehold, starting in the early stages of childhood. Everything from children’s toys, books, cards and clothes still often screams at us that it’s boys and men who get to explore the world and be unstoppable and curious and strong and do anything they want, while girls should happily clothe themselves in humility and be kind and accommodating.

Competence is still coded as ‘masculine.’ And so is brilliance, genius, ambition, drive, power, strength and heroism.

All of this then, unsurprisingly, leads to something as hilarious as nearly half of men feeling confident they could land a plane, even though likely close to none of them could.

Not just that, though.

So, why does all this matter?

On the one hand, overconfidence can benefit men, at least to some extent and in certain situations.

One study found, for instance, that it can lead to men landing better, higher-ranked jobs. And another that this could explain the gender pay gap for top positions. Having an inflated self-image likely also helps men in domains such as politics and business, where exuding an air of unhinged level of confidence can be as important — if not more — as what you actually have to say or are capable of doing.

For better or worse, ‘faking it till you make it’ can go a long way. (And it certainly seems to have worked for quite a few people at the top of our society’s hierarchies.)

Meanwhile, women’s tendency to underestimate their abilities can hold us back. Unfortunately, our poor self-image can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we believe we can’t, we won’t. In particular, if we never knew or saw a woman who did. This can then influence several things in our lives, from the subjects we choose at school and the careers we pursue later on in life to the decisions we make regarding domestic duties or childcare.

I grew up with this mentality, and although I’ve tried to overcome it for some time now, at 30 years old, there’s still a voice in my head that tries to convince me that I can’t do things I know I’m capable of. Or even things I’ve already done over and over again.

It luckily gets smaller with every passing year, though. Fingers crossed, it will disappear completely one day.

But on the other hand, let’s not forget that unwavering confidence in one’s own skills and capabilities can also be downright dangerous.

That’s likely one of the reasons why female pilots are arguably safer than male pilots, despite surveys of passengers showing many still ‘don’t trust’ female pilots. And why female drivers take fewer risks and are, on average, less dangerous to other road users than men. (Again, despite the common myth that ‘women are bad drivers.’)

Besides, failing to recognise the limitations of our bodies and minds — as we age or otherwise — can also prove to be hazardous to ourselves.

And in some instances, perhaps even life-threatening.

All in all, women could benefit from channelling at least some of that unabashed male overconfidence, while men could benefit from recognising that they aren’t all Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but it does look like there’s a very, very slim chance you, or any other person without prior flying training, could safely land a plane in an emergency.

Just like women aren’t born knowing how to clean a burnt pot, you aren’t born with innate piloting skills.

But there’s a high chance that if we dismantle gender biases and stereotypes that lead men to overestimate their abilities and women to undervalue theirs, this would be a better world to live in.

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