[WikiEN-l] Empathisation vs. systematisation

Sat Jul 9 17:20:06 UTC 2005

Skyring wrote:
> 
> Someone was talking about EQ, which I've since forgotten whether it
> stands for Emotion or Empathy.

Empathisation. Its complement is systematisation.

I've looked around on Wikipedia and it seems that the concept isn't as 
well-known or widespread as I thought it was: Wikipedia doesn't cover it.

I used EQ as an abbreviation for "empathisation quotient", and SQ as an 
abbreviation for "systematisation quotient". These terms are used by 
researchers in developmental psychology, particularly autism-related 
research. People usually tend to have an average value of both, but 
people who have a high value for one tend to have a low one for the 
other. People with noticeably low EQs and high SQs are said to have 
[[Asperger's syndrome]]. People with *extremely* low EQs (and typically 
correspondingly higher SQs) are autists. Women tend to have a higher 
average EQ than men, making them more suitable for tasks involving 
contact with other people, while men tend to have a higher average SQ, 
making them more suitable for technical subjects (IT, mathematics and 
natural sciences, that sort of thing). Of course, there are also high-SQ 
women and high-EQ men. They aren't even particularly rare (although 
autism is pretty rare in females).

People with high SQs tend to favour logical, consistent and predictable 
sytems, such as computers and the Internet. Hence why their incidence on 
Wikipedia is higher than in the general population, and hence why 
Wikipedians are on average less empathisational than the general population.

Concepts whose understanding requires a broad understanding of human 
emotional response, such as the concept of "personal attacks", 
"civility" and stuff like that, which isn't measurable in numbers or 
cannot be objectively defined, is difficult for these people. Purely 
logical thinking, on the other hand, is difficult for people on the 
other side of the spectrum -- most [[logical fallacy|logical 
fallacies]], for example, are an emptional response as opposed to a 
systematic conclusion, especially things like [[appeal to authority]] 
(if a highly-regarded expert favours something, it feels more plausible) 
and [[appeal to popularity]] (if everyone thinks it's right, it feels 
more plausible).

Incidentally, it also tends to be the systematisers who challenge 
pointless social conventions and question their validity. It's probably 
thanks to them that, for example, agnosticism is no longer a crime 
punishable by death, although the people at the time found the idea of 
tolerating it quite abhorrent (an emotional response). In general, 
systematisers seem to have less prejudice and other societally-imposed 
preconceptions, which is why I personally think they deserve much more 
attention to have their opinions heard than they currently get, even (or 
perhaps especially) when they are unable to shape it into a 
socially-accepted form that is palatable to the empathisers.

Timwi