Systemising empathising

• Empathising


  The drive to recognise, identify and respond to others' emotional states
• Empathising


  • Important in social interactions
  • Allows us to understand and predict behaviour of other people
• Systemising


  The drive to analyse and understand systems
• Systems


  • Mechanical (computers)
  • Numerical (calendar/schedules)
  • Collectibles (rocks)
• Systemising


  • Non-social
  • Predict how systems behave
  • Structure, rules to make sense in relevance to the world
• Females are better at empathising
• Females are more sensitive to facial expressions and more person-focused, have an instinct about other feelings
• Males are better at systemising
• Males have a greater ability to analyse systems, work out rules and how they operate
• Occupations of males who are better at systemising


  • Engineers
  • Physicists
  • Mathematicians
• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)


  Impaired empathising, explains their difficulties in social interactions
• ASD


  Hyperdeveloped systemising, explains recall in details, narrow interest, repetitive behaviour and desire for sameness
• Grove - Components of empathy

  • Cognitive elements - recognising and understanding people's emotional states
  • Affective empathy - respond appropriately to person's emotions/state of mind
• Higher personal distress


  Feeling so strongly towards someone's emotions that their feelings overpower others
• Empathetic concern


  Profound sympathy and consideration for others - impaired in ASD
• Lawson - Women performed better on empathising task, men without ASD did better than those with
• Females did worse on systemising task, men didn't differ
• Japanese with ASD also did worse on empathising, better on systemising
• Collectivist vs Individualist cultures had very different outcomes but similar results
• The validity of the theory the measurement is based on is questioned
• Valla- 144 students males low on empathising, high on systemising. Females performed strongly on both
• The theory has a male bias and can't account for ASD in girls