Empathizing–systemizing theory

The empathizing–systemizing (E–S) theory suggests that people may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions: empathizing (E) and systemizing (S). It measures a person's strength of interest in empathy (the ability to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions); and a person's strength of interest in systems (in terms of the drive to analyse or construct them).

According to the originator of the hypothesis, Simon Baron-Cohen, the E-S theory has been tested using the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ), developed by him and colleagues, and generates five different 'brain types' depending on the presence or absence of discrepancies between their scores on E or S. E-S profiles show reliable sex differences in the general population (more females showing the profile E>S and more males showing the profile S>E). Baron-Cohen and associates say the E-S theory is a better predictor of who chooses STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects than gender is. The E-S theory has been extended into the 'Extreme Male Brain' (EMB) theory of autism and Asperger syndrome, which are associated in the E-S theory with below-average empathy and average or above-average systemizing.

Baron-Cohen's studies and theory have been questioned on multiple grounds. The overrepresentation of engineers could depend on a sampling bias, and analyses of autism have not found that autism clustered preferentially around areas rich in IT industry.

E-S theory was developed by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen as a major reconceptualization of cognitive sex differences in the general population and in an effort to understand why the cognitive difficulties in autism appeared to lie in domains in which he says on average females outperformed males and why cognitive strengths in autism appeared to lie in domains in which on average males outperformed females. In the first chapter of his 2003 book The Essential Difference, he compares with the bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, written by John Gray in 1992-3, and states: "the view that men are from Mars and women Venus paints the differences between the two sexes as too extreme. The two sexes are different. but are not so different that we cannot understand each other."

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