On a typical day, men spend a third as much time cleaning as women.
Does that make women beacons of cleanliness, while men are genetically unable to see the messiness in their midst?
This myth is a common explanation for why men don’t do as much housework as women. Men walk into a room and apparently can’t see the dust bunnies gathering on the floor or the piles of laundry stacked up on the couch.
It lets men off the hook for not doing their fair share of the household cleaning.
But in a recent study we show that men aren’t dirt-blind – they can see mess just as well as women. They are simply less severely penalized for not keeping their spaces neat and tidy.