Why SQ vs EQ? (Rant against Extreme Male Brain)

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I agree as well. I'm sick of the binary categories that people like to use. I also like the fact that things are getting better for people who don't fit the binary gender codes. I disagree with shoving males and females into gender specific boxes. I was born female, but I don't feel one bit feminine. My situation also puts an interesting spin on things. I would have fit into the male gender quite nicely as a young person in the Mid 60s. Being the Mid 60s Mod that I am, I don't fit into either gender these days. Young women like to wear fitted clothes that show off their curves, or skimpy clothing. Young men either go for the hippie look or they spike, shave or mess up their hair and wear goatees. I feel like a masculine 60s Mod and I wouldn't want to look or feel any other way. I'm not like everybody else.

Info on my sample:

The sample consisted of 222 participants of which 69 were male and 153 were female. The ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 78 years of age (M = 31.57, SD = 10.12). Of the 222 participants, 75 were currently studying at university or TAFE, 116 were currently employed and not studying, and 31 were neither studying nor working. Participants were recruited from <my university>, with the majority being fourth year psychology students, as well as via online forum advertisements and word-of mouth (including the snowball method).


It was tricky to look into that with my data, as all I have to go on is Imagination as it is measured by the AQ. Here I have plotted the Imagination factor against the mean of the other factors. There's a weak correlation. (Higher number = poorer imagination)

Can you point me to the test that people on this forum have been taking? I'd be really interested to compare the questions, because everyone has such different ideas about what "imagination" means...it might even be the wrong term to use for this factor in the AQ.



P.S. Feel free to pick holes in my choice of analysis - it has been a year and a half since I have looked at my thesis and attempted to make a graph!

Thanks yellowtamarin, that's sounds a decent sample for an exploratory study.

This sounds to me like something you could take forward for further research, if you ever wanted to do.

Defining imagination would be an interesting challenge...I suppose you could interview a number of people then construct your own scale...have no idea how many people may already have done this, not in my particular areas of interest or expertise.

To go back to the SQ vs EQ
question, I don't really understand exactly how EQ measures aspects of empathy so I'm going to use very basic terms here and hope I make sense...

I score high on SQ, which make sense to me, I do tend to have a strong preference for logical systematic approach.

In part I wonder if this is :because I don't trust my assessment of my own emotions, I feel emotions very strongly but find it very difficult to categorise and label them, or know what to do with them, or how to express them.

I also feel quite distressed by others strong emotions, but am uncertain how to handle them, I am uncertain how to comfort the sad or appease the angry; though I might almost feel their emotions quite strongly, what to do about, and how to respond to others emotions can confuse me greatly.

To protect myself in my confusion it is possible that I may outwardly seem quite cold and calm, whilst inwardly I may be reeling. It almost as if I have a very strong internal empathy, and a weak external empathy. I have to partially shutdown my internal empathy to function, I do this frequently, and sometimes it can lead to a kind of delayed blowback response, a physical reaction, where I feel worn, tired and sometimes slightly nauseous afterwards.

Being systematic is much easier, it protects me from the complexity and uncertainty of emotions.

I don't know if this is something unique to me or not.

Either way it seems to me that the current EQ measure does not really measure this intense inward experience, but poor outward expression of empathy at all.

The EQ SQ test site seems to be having trouble when I try to click on it today, however, here is the WIKIPEDIA EQ SQ EXPLANATION CLICK HEREwiki article, and the link to the test is at the bottom of this page, so I hope it will work for you later today.

The issues of Empathy and Imagination were the two things that discouraged me from accepting ASD as the source of my issues, because I for sure had imagination and empathy, or so I thought. It turns out I didn't understand the issue, and it is just not as flat out as it seems. Affective and Cognitive empathy are two different things, and if I know for certain someone is feeling a way it is common for me to feel (anxiety, sadness, alienation) then I can easily respond to them based on how I would want to be treated. But in relationships, it is far more complex than just treating someone how *I* want to be treated, and my actions leave huge gaps in the emotional needs of others because of my limited ability to figure out what they are going through underneath their own surface.

On Imagination, it seems that we are fully capable of imaginative function within the worlds we ourselves have constructed, but at least in my case, I have a harder time in any imaginative creation that requires teamwork or using the rules of someone else's imaginary land. What I thought were hours spent as a child using my imagination to play turned out to be sort of odd expressions of play, like using my barbies to create an ornate family tree of very dimensionally flat relationships and very little dialogue between characters. It far more about who was who's daughter or son, what profession they are, who they will marry, and what room are they going to sit in, rather than having them talk to each other and relate like I've (now) seen little girls do with dolls.

Also in regards to imagination, I find that for myself, I can make up a large number of things to entertain myself, however when it comes to problem solving for myself, I get completely stuck, lacking the ability to apply my creativity to my own problems because I want to stick to rituals and habits, comforting but not the solution to problems.

And thank you, Mick, for understanding my point initially about the limits of binary gender systems! You're the best

It was just a general empathy test that was not made with autism in mind, thus I trust it a bit more than this SBC stuff. It divided empathy into four different factors, which were something along the lines of fantasy/imagination, emotional concern, perspective taking, and something else. I forgot exactly what the categories. By the way, according to the AQ I do not meet the cutoff for autism.

Meh. The vast majority of the questions relate to cognitive empathy, not affective empathy, and cognitive empathy would probably be easier to measure with a test. A psychopath should score better than an aspie on the test. I think the theory is mainly that SBC tries to cover himself up when ever someone points out thar he is wrong to make it look like he was right the whole time (not that I'm much better....)

It's called IRI (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) http://www.eckerd.edu/academics/psychology/iri.php

Here is the WP thread about it: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt169811.html

Last edited by Blownmind on 10 Jul 2012, 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, that's it. Of course I didn't actually collect statistics on it, I just looked through it and took note of what trends I saw. I also wasn't keeping track of the gender of the poster, so that might be significant.

I did:

http://abnormaldiversity.blogspot.ca/2011/08/autism-and-types-of-empathy.html

By the way, WP is a data mining goldmine. So many people post online tests that piles of people post their results to. I love this place!

Thanks, very interesting. It is very different to the EQ. I only found a few questions that seem directly comparable.

I have some interestingly different results on the IRI whether I take it based on my spontaneous (immediate) response, or my more considered (once my intellectual filter has cut in)

However, the EQ result does not seem to be effected by this - all be it I get a slightly higher result today than when I took it 3 weeks ago (go figure...I do wonder how much these test reults are influenced by your mood on the day...)

I have posted the results on the original thread here:-

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4768105.html#4768105

I think that there is some merit to the "extreme male brain" hypothesis, as well as the high systemizing/low empathizing factors, but like most of Baron-Cohen's hypotheses, I think he pushes for them too much for the amount of evidence that is out there. Since he is one of the handful of current researchers who is pretty well-known in the lay public, I feel that he overgeneralizes his findings too much and too quickly, and talks about study findings as if they were solid fact.

I'm a big believer that fetal testosterone plays a significant part in why boys have more early-onset neuropsych disorders and why left-handedness is linked to neuropsych disorders, but what I do NOT like about the "extreme male brain" hypothesis is how even the title just keeps up the stereotype that ASDs are virtually nonexistent in females. I do think that there is a higher rate of ASDs in males, due to my beliefs in fetal testosterone, but I'm one of those who thinks that the ratio of males to females in AS is more like 2:1 or 3:1, certainly not 10:1!

It is my belief that hypermasculization can appear autism, not that autism is hypermasculization.

Thanks. I haven't taken so statistics, so I don't get what p means, butvas far as I can tell you didn't appear to note outliers. How consistent were the results from person to person?