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

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While autistic people (tend to) have a higher "SQ" than "EQ", I believe that this is not as significant as it is made out to be, and that the generalized conclusion that autism is an extreme male brain to be utter nonsense. First, comparing "systemizing" whatever that's supposed to be, to "empathsizing", an equally abstract, ambiguous, undefined, and fluid concept, seems to be incredibly arbitrary, like comparing everyone in the world to either be more of a car kind of person or a more of a 200X Ridley's Mountain Bike (I know nothing about bikes, it's supposed to be a specific model) type of person. What really convinced me this SQ vs. EQ thing was arbitrary was this: A high SQ doesn't mean you are goodP with logically exploring systems, so it doesn't mean you are good at math, it means you are attracted to a system and are good with it and it can be anything from math to knowing the various models drills. Now, the EQ refers specifically to cognitive empathy, and to me "empathy" sounds a lot another system, while Affective Empathy sounds less like a system. So, that means "systemizing" must really be "systemizing excluding empathy", which is were I find things are just getting ridiculous. To me autism isn't biased to male or female systems, just systems that are atypical. Really, autistic special interests are not typical man things. It only appears Autistics are more masculine as they chose a feminie system as a counterweight. There are systems that men tend to be better at than women, and Autists are also bad at, say sports for example. Now, if we were to set that the basis for the whole system in terms of such a system autism would be an extreme feminine brain. I guess it's only because empathy is considered more important than sports that everything is relative to cognitive empathy regarding systemizing.

Also, while empathy is a feminine trait, and a lack of cognitive empathy is an autistic trait, a lack of it is not an autistic trait. In fact some researchers say that autistic people have higher affective empathy than average, and I've even seen claims that all empaths have mild autism. Now, on this forum I saw an empathy test with 4 factors, all of which women tend to score higher than men. Now, from people results here I noticed a few trends: on one factor autistic people tend to score lower, on one aspect they tend to score average, on one factor they tend to score average, and on the last factor the results were all over the place. From this it can be concluded that autistic people are neither like men nor women when it comes to empathy. So why do we base empathy on cognitive empathy? Let's compare autism to psychopathy. Now according to S/E theory, psychopathy is the mirror opposite of autism: in autism there is a lack of cognitive empathy, but affective empathy remains intact. In psychopathy, there is a lack of affective empathy while cognitive empathy remains intact. The ratios between diagnosis in males to females is very similar between the two. However, by S/E it would be that Autistic People have extreme male brains, while psychopaths have androgynous or even feminine brains, and that simply does not make sense.

Now then, viso-spacial skills and mathematical ability are both traits of a masculine mind, but if Autism was an extreme male brain than why is there such a large amount of people with both AS and NVLD? Indeed, I've seen the claim that girls with AS are more likely to get labeled with NVLD instead of AS. One test on this forum evaluated the mental gender of people. Now while the vast majority of the people who responded to the thread were female, pretty much everyone, male and female, responded as having an androgynous mind, not a masculine one like would be expected. If autism was an extreme male mind, why does it seem that abnormal sexuallity is more common for both genders of AS? I believe that autistic mind is more androgynous than it is masculine. I don't feel extremely masculine, that's for sure.

Now, this does not actually go against S/E theory as by Extreme Male Mind it only refers to the SQ/EQ quotient. However, it is still misleading as unless you look further into it and learn what all the terminology means it appears to suggest a bunch of things that are not true. I believe the actual gender ratio in autism is a lot closer to 1:1, and that the only reason it's more diagnosed in males is because all of the research focused on males, and because it is stereotypied as being a male disorder. Autistic females get diagnosed with something else, probably an anxiety or personality disorder. This bias also skews other measures of autism, making hypermasculine people more likely to be diagnosed, further skewing it. Finally with the digit ratios, psychopaths tend to have feminine digit ratios, but they are by no means hyperfeminine.

In conclusion, autism is not a hypermasculine disorder, it has masculine, feminine, and androgynous traits, and thus it should not be treated as a hypermasculine disorder.

Thanks for sharing.

I believe there's been a pole here showing it split or around half and half of each. And if mirror neurons were affected, as some posit, you should definitely see a deficit in affective empathy. Systematizing ( which typical men do ) should require a rationalization bias, over feeling it. In my experience, I've noted this happening vs hugging and mutual crying.

A lack of cognitive empathy, which is sympathy , would require a deficit in abstract reasoning. But I guess if theory of mind is short in this regard, then one couldn't mentally project themselves into the other persona and sympathize - you'd have a shortage here of it.

I'd posit that having theory of mind, though not as accurate as 'typical', or atypical ToM, would perforce cause "sympathy."

Furthermore, it appears we have another spectrum of these traits, as ToM is, as is affective empathy. I think the best one could do is a correlation with these.

These are very interesting thoughts, I would have to read through it a second time to understand it more fully, and review the meanings associated with EQ SQ again to review them.

I agree that society is overly enthusiastic about making gender binary, yes no, black white, and that it causes trouble because people are far more complicated (I think the complexity makes us more interesting and is why we have beauty and art, etc). But it is easier to "sell" gender if it is two opposites, instead of a grey area. Parents in previous generations had to help their children make gender appropriate choices so that they wouldn't be outcast from society, but I think that these days parents are more able to allow their children to be people rather than "be a boy" or "be a girl". This is a good thing because sometimes boys love to decorate and sometimes girl love to drive trucks, and it seems ridiculous that previously in history it would be any other way, but look at how different it was to have Rosie the Riveter durring the second World War, or what an achievement it is for someone like Tom Gabel from the band Against Me! to change his life and live as a woman.

As an extreme systemizer, I can't condemn society or scientists for wanting to classify things, and people, but I do think that it is high time for there be an improved system of classification, where gender is represented in the many varieties that it actually exists instead of trying to shove everyone into "Boy" or "Girl" and there are no other options or combinations or variations. Nature has expressed much more variety.

SQ is a test with somewhat systemizing-related questions that autistic people tend to score fairly high on.

EQ is a test with somewhat empathy-related questions that autistic people tend to score fairly low on.

I think of them as more extensions of the AQ than anything else.

That is, I think, about as far as it goes, regardless of SBC's claims.

Can I share with you some of my findings from my Honours thesis? Some of it might be of interest. This study looked at autistic traits in the general population (not those diagnosed with an ASD).

- I did a factor analysis on the AQ, and looked for gender differences not just in their overall scores, but for each factor. The only factor (out of Social Skill, Attention to Detail, Narrow-focusing, and Imagination) that showed a significant gender difference was "Imagination", with females scoring significantly higher. This had been found in a previous study as well, but contradicted Baron-Cohen's findings. My results suggest that males and females do not differ in their level of autistic traits, as measured by the AQ, in any aspect except Imagination. I went as far as suggesting that low imagination might not even be an autistic trait at all, but more of a "male" trait. This was speculation of course.

- I also did a factor analysis on the EQ, which separated the scales into five factors: Cognitive Empathy, Affective Empathy, Empathic Concern, Empathic Support, and Social Skill. The last three factors were scrapped as they were deemed to not measure what was supposed to be measured, so I was left with a shortened version of the EQ with just Affective Empathy and Cognitive Empathy. I bring this up because you seemed to be saying that the EQ measures cognitive empathy - it actually measures a bunch of things, including irrelevant things (like social skill).

- With my shortened version of the EQ, females scored higher than males on both cognitive and affective empathy, regardless of AQ score.

- Imagination (from the AQ) was very highly correlated with Cognitive Empathy, suggesting they are similar constructs.

- I created a few of my own mini-scales. These were designed to measure Social Success, Social Desire, and Social Effort. The only scale to show a gender difference was Social Effort, with females scoring significantly higher.

- I suggested that the combination of better imagination, stronger empathy, and utilising these skills when trying harder than males to fit in with their peers, would probably result in a female appearing "less autistic” than her male counterpart, despite there actually being a comparable level of autistic traits between the two. Therefore, fewer diagnoses.

All of this is of course assuming autism is a spectrum condition, and these findings can be extended to those who meet diagnostic criteria.

So,what are SQ and AQ?

yellowtamarin that is really fascinating

In the descriptions of autism / aspergers I'd read one of the reasons I am unsure if I fit the criteria (and amongs reasons I'm seeking professional assessmemt) is that I seem to have a stronger imagination, better empathy and desire to try and fit in than described. I'm female.

Interesting my SO, another undiagnosed possible spectrumite, male, has good imagination, but a much weaker empathy and much weaker desire to fit in than me...

Of course anecdotes do not science make...

If you don't mind saying...How big was your sample by the way? Was it undergrads or general population?

@Ganondox
The terms masculine and feminine are more an unfortunate carry over from classical greek culture and western tradition (and quite unfairly biased against women. Hysteria, anyone? ) So in this case "extreme male brain" means logical, orderly and (at least) a desire to appear rational.

Your post illustrates the systemizing concept perfectly! What I mean is, you expressed yourself with a step by step argument rooted in traditional logical order, rationalizations and a dislike for fluid or ambiguous definitions.

I generally don't like framing things in terms of masculine or feminine because I feel it "others" and dismisses a whole gender. I like the philosophy of yin and yang a little more as it can also be applied to masculine and feminine, but it's a quality that sexual organs have, not intrinsically tied to a persons nature. I also like that the ideals are balance, harmony and each is perceived as equally important.