I've extrapolated quite a bit from what the polls showed.  Have you noticed similar gender differences though?

What is contributing to this gender difference?

Both responses are useful for different situations, do you think one generally tends to be better than the other?

What factors are creating this gender difference?  How should people who differ in the way the state things interact to end at the best outcome in the end?

Or maybe you think this gender difference doesn't exisit at all - I'm somewhat open to that viewpoint :)

In our house my husband just flat out says he can't remember. He never tries to guess. So when he remembers, he's right. I think it's 50/50. I will remember things like where he put his keys, which pants he was wearing yesterday that they might be in, that sort of thing- and he will remember things like we're out of coffee. My dad's not like that, though, so I don't know if it's a gender thing. He's stubborn and certain (most often for the better), my mom often is too, and I think it's a family trait on both sides of my family. And my best female friend is too- a confidence thing? I don't know. ;) I've read other studies where that sort of thing has to do with whether you were an only child/ youngest/ middle/ or oldest sibling, too, and what the expectations were in your family as such, i.e. older siblings might have more responsibility for decision making, or pressure to be high achievers, etc.

It also might be cultural. I watched a news segment a couple of years ago- American high school students did relatively poorly on academic tests compared to countries in Asia and Europe but they scored sky high when rating their level of confidence. I don't know where Canada ranks on that.

There are family, cultural, etc. differences for sure.  The study should have been fairly even that way between the genders though.  I've also seen the gender differences from different cultures, although some are more obvious than others.

It's a bit funny, as I don't think it's always internal confidence, but just how confident we feel.  If I ask Chemguy to put a percentage on his certainity and I do so on mine, mine will often be higher than his even though from our original answers you would have guessed the opposite.  I've seen this played out when someone was wrong, when women said they were certain, they are surprised after the fact, because they really were certain.  The men aren't surprised and backtrack on their original statements, "well, that was just my best guess at the time".

Some of that may be due to how people deal with being wrong, but based on what I've seen, I think at least part of it is due to what people were originally thinking.

Kimmio, cultural changes are absolutely a factor. thanks for bringing that into the conversation.

As a Canadian older female in a department staffed predominantly by Americans and mainly younger males , it is interesting to see this play out. 

I'm always certain I lost my cell phone. My husband is always certain it's in my big purse somewhere. He's right 99.9% of the time and I still believe I lost it until I dig around and find it in there. It happens about once a week, too. ;)

Kimmio,

thus, the reason why you got married :3

Must be! ;) I'm very fortunate that he just laughs and loves me when that happens.

(Temporary derail) Inanna, I even got this mini stick-on flashlight in my Christmas stocking so I stuck it to the inside of my purse, for when I "lose" my cell phone- then it came unstuck and I lost it! Could still be in there stuck to the bottom. Lol!

I just couldn't lurk on this one! 

My opinion is - it is a multi facetted thing.  Partly cultural, partly upbringiing, partly basic personalityy, partly confodence level.

Oh dear - look at all the typos that I don't know how to correct on my new tablet.  Sorry.

Experience and onservation tells me that it is only a problem  if you think it is.  The solution can be as simple as taking a deep breath and couble checking the other persons  contribution, and your own.

Changing your way of communication sometimes forcesa change in the other person's.

As a child I was 'supposed' to be co operative, not disagreee with others, put other people's wants before my own, etc.  For many years I used those rules in my independant adult life.  Eventually I realiseed that this meant that many people ignored my contributions - so I changed - slowly but steadily.  It has been an 'interesting' transition for me and those close to me.  Some really like it, others don't.