Trying to clean out some of the stuff I have in Bloglines I came across this article and accompanying quizes I found at 3 Quarks Daily back in early June. "How male or female is your brain?" at the Guardian Unlimited.
It is by Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and measures your Empathy Quotient and Systemising Quotient.
Baron-Cohen’s theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. He calls it the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory.
Empathising is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity.
Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems.
So my EQ is supposedly 16 (maybe I was being hard on myself since I don’t consider myself very empathic), but 0-32 is lower than average. People with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism average 20. The average woman scores 47 and the average man 42.
My SQ was 24. The average is 20-39, with the average woman scoring 24 and the average man 30.
Plotted out I have an extreme S brain, but only due to my extremely low EQ score. Actually, I think my SQ should probably be higher, that is, more male-like. Maybe I was cutting myself some slack on this one too.
Oh well. They tell me not to worry. There are lots of explanations for such low EQ scores supposedly.
Combine this with my theoretically less scientifically derived "traditionally feminine personality" and it’s no wonder my society has me completely confused.
I do think that I am far better at empathizing than this quiz reflected though. It asked about how easy or naturally various empathic responses and intuitions come to me. But it did not ask about how much effort and attention I put into achieving those goals, only if it was easy or effortless. For many years I acted only on what naturally occured to me in this arena. But for the last several years I have been actively working on just these skills. It is hard work, and I often fail. But, I have improved greatly.
As in anything, the effort that one puts into something, not the natural gift, is what matters—at least on a moral plane, if not an aesthetic one. And in this area,—as in most ,if not all—I’ll choose the moral any day.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Em // Dec 24, 2005 at 5:41 pm
I’m 64 EQ and 16 SQ, so on the edge of that “extreme female brain” they claim never to have discovered. But I agree that asking how easy it is to think a certain way is different from asking if you ever do think that way–good point, M. Either way, seems as though neither of us is quite in the “normal” range.
2 Mark // Dec 24, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Oh my beautiful friend…I think we already knew that we aren’t “quite normal.” ;->
But then that is OK with me.
3 Em // Dec 25, 2005 at 3:09 pm
And it certainly is never obvious to those of us who are supposed to be so sensitive to such things that it’s an effort for you to be a thoughtful person who so clearly cares much about your friends. It seems to me that it’s the effort and results, rather than the ease, that matters, anyway.
Best greetings of the season to you!
4 Mark // Dec 25, 2005 at 3:24 pm
Thank you for the wonderful thoughts Em. It is extremely important to me to know that I sometimes get it right. I also like myself much better as this person. Thank you.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
5 ...the thoughts are broken... // Jan 11, 2006 at 6:43 pm
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