Measuring Empathizing and Systemizing with a Large US Sample
The concern of this paper is how empathizing and systemizing can be measured
Authors
Daniel B. Wright
Elin M. Skagerberg
February 22, 2012
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031661
Abstract
A large number of people completed one of two versions of the empathizing quotient (EQ) and systemizing quotient (SQ). One version had the negatively phrased items all re-worded. These re-worded items were answered more rapidly than the original items, and for the SQ produced a more reliable scale. Subjects gave self-assessments of empathizing and systemizing, and these were moderately correlated, r≈.6, with their respective quotients.
Females had on average higher empathizing scores and males had on average higher systemizing scores. If a female-male pair was chosen at random, the female would have the higher empathizing score about two-thirds of the time, and the males would have the higher systemizing score about two-thirds of the time.
"Empathizing is the ability to identify with other people's thoughts and feelings and to be able to respond to these mental states with appropriate emotions .
Systemizing is being interested in understanding, predicting, and constructing rule-based systems. "
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