Empathizing and systemizing cognitive traits in the sciences and humanities

For several decades, cognitive research on personality and individual differences has focused on psychological traits other than general intelligence. Here we present data on empathizing and systemizing cognitive traits in science and humanities students. In view of existing data on autistic traits in scientists, we hypothesized that the science students would show higher systemizing than empathizing and that the humanities students would show the opposite pattern. Our findings suggest that individuals in the sciences possess a cognitive style that is more systemizing-driven than empathizing-driven, whereas individuals in humanities possess a cognitive style that is much more empathizing-driven than systemizing-driven. Both type of major and gender independently and highly significantly contribute to this effect. Within the sciences, the systemizing pattern is especially pronounced in engineering and physics. Men and women have been found previously to differ in their systemizing-empathizing cognitive style, with men being stronger in systemizing and women being stronger in empathizing. We find the same gender differences within each type of major. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.