Systemisers are better at maths
The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostalgebraist.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;164069138209&#x2F;in-lieu-of-a-longer-post-ive-been-planning-to" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostalgebraist.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;164069138209&#x2F;in-lieu-o...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostalgebraist.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;164123186154&#x2F;baron-cohen-miscellany" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostalgebraist.tumblr.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;164123186154&#x2F;baron-coh...</a><p>The weirdest result might be that a pathology that one would ascribe to the empathizing side, borderline personality disorder (BPD), actually <i>positively</i> correlates with measures of systemizing, so there is a strange overlap between BPD and autism, the pathology one associates with systemizing:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5590952&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5590952&#x2F;</a><p>What&#x27;s more, there is no clear sex difference in empathy:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosone&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal.pone.0179336" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;plosone&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal....</a><p>---<p>More reliable and pronounced sex differences have been found on a similar scale, namely interest in things vs interest in people and that has also been linked to the gender gap in STEM:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.frontiersin.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;10.3389&#x2F;fpsyg.2015.00189&#x2F;full" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.frontiersin.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;10.3389&#x2F;fpsyg.2015.0018...</a><p>Interestingly, some sex differences in cognitive processing disappear when one simply changes the domain to be more focused on people (e.g. rotation of dolls vs rotation of abstract shapes):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S1041608015001818" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S104160801...</a><p>So the underlying difference here might simply be in innate preferences to process information that is in a social context vs an arbitrary context.<p>Autists have a lower preference for the social context, which is essentially a difference in value function, so value from epistemic&#x2F;predictive accuracy independent of norms gets more weight.<p>It looks like systemizing emerges in both extremes of the people vs things dimension (though more likely in the latter), explaining both the NCBI study above and the Nature article linked here. Looking only at interest in people is a cleaner approach IMO (not a cognitive scientist though, so take this with a grain of salt). Systemizing seems to basically capture something like abstract thinking, but, guess what, you can also think abstractly about social problems. The crucial point is rather whether it actually feels pleasurable to delve into extremely obscure worlds of symbols and concepts, far removed from ordinary social experience and norms, and here the sex difference is quite pronounced (about one standard deviation). Notably this sex difference appears to be fully determined by presence of prenatal androgen (a male sex hormone such as testosterone), and a preference for gendered toys (dolls vs cars) also been found in some primate species:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.sagepub.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1111&#x2F;j.1467-9280.1992.tb00028.x" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.sagepub.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1111&#x2F;j.1467-9280.1992.tb0...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newscientist.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newscientist.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...</a>