Credit: iStockphoto/Catharina Van Den DikkenbergWomen investors achieve better results than men, because they are more cautious. Even the Wall Street Journal wrote in 2009 For Mother’s Day, Give Her Reins to the Portfolio.

New research into gibbons, led by Dr Clare Cunningham, a psychology lecturer at Abertay University, suggests that females apply caution in undertaking experiences with new tools but perform better than males with training.

Male and female gibbons were observed using a rake-like tool.

Females without prior experience with the tool took three times as long to execute their test as male gibbons. Scientists believe that females — particularly ones that are pregnant or caring for young infants — weigh the “reproductive costs” of taking on the new experience.

Among male gibbons, the reverse was true. Rather than increasing performance with the rake-like tool with pretraining, the male gibbons took longer to retrieve the tool, suggesting they lost interest.

Men are known to trade too often in their stock porfolios, wanting change for the sake of trying to time performance to the moment.

Dr Cunningham says that the observations — and especially the dramatic increase in performance among tool-trained female gibbons opens up a whole range of new questions about gender-based human learning. via Psysorg.org