Sex and Major Differences in Mindreading Abilities, Empathizing, and Systemizing Traits: Data from Korean College Students (대학생의 마음읽기 능력과 공감하기-체계화하기 성향의 성차와 전공차)

CHOI HYEON OK (최현옥); Ghim, Hei-rhee (김혜리)

Sex and Major Differences in Mindreading Abilities, Empathizing, and Systemizing Traits: Data from Korean College Students

THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
2010, 23(1), pp.119-139
Publisher : The Korean Society For Developmental Psychology
Research Area : Social Science > Psychological Science

CHOI HYEON OK ¹, Ghim, Hei-rhee ¹

¹충북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

According to Baron-Cohen(2003), differences between male and female, and between science and humanities students could be explained by two psychological dimensions: empathizing and systemizing. Systemizing is the drive to analyse systems or construct systems, and held to be our most powerful way of understanding and predicting the law-governed inanimate universe. Empathizing is the drive to identify mental states and respond to these with an appropriate emotion, and held to be our most powerful way of understanding and predicting social world. In this study, sex and major differences of mindreading abilities, empathizing and systemizing were tested with Korean college students. 244 college students in the sciences major and the humanities major were given TOM tasks and self-report questionnaires assessing the systemizing and empathizing tendencies: SQ and EQ. There were significant sex and major differences on the mindreading scores but not on the empathizing quotient, and significant sex differences on the systemizing quotient. On TOM task, females and humanities students scored significantly higher than males and science students, but on the SQ, male students scored significantly higher than female students. In addition, more females and humanities students were categorized as the “empathizer” in whom empathizing is stronger than systemizing, but more males and science students were as the “systemizer” in whom systemizing is stronger than empathizing. there The results indicated that males and the individuals in the sciences were more systemizing-driven than emapthizing-driven, whereas females and the individuals in humanities were emapthizing-driven than systemizing-driven. In addition, the systemizers scored significantly higher than the empatizer on the AQ, suggesting that people with high systemizing have higher levels of autistic features.

KEYWORDS

mindreading, theory of mind, empathizing, systemizing, sex differences, major area, cognitive style

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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