14 ms·

Study finds negative association between empathizing and calculation ability

189 points by randomname2 11y ago

j2kun 11y ago
I'm going to read the rest of this paper, but it looks like the title here is misleading. The last sentence of the abstract: > These results identify empathy, and social skills more generally, as previously unknown predictors of mathematical achievement. Edit: added: > Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no relationship between systemizing and math achievement after controlling for domain general abilities and no relationship between the systemizing brain type (greater discrepancy between systemizing and empathizing) and math achievement. More edits: The "negative correlation" turns out to be only for "calculation" and the values are r=-0.22, p=0.02, with a sample size of around a hundred individuals. This is a negligible effect by any stretch of the imagination. Sounds like the authors did their diligence in writing this up, and it's the submitter's fault for the linkbait headline.
- mklim 11y ago
  The title is correct. That sentence just means that they're predictors, not necessarily that they're positive predictors. As in, if you know one you can predict the other. In the results section: > There was a negative correlation between EQ-C and the Calculation Skills composite score with greater empathizing predicting lower math achievement (r(110) = −0.22, p = 0.02).
  - j2kun 11y ago
    A correlation of 0.2 is negligible. Especially with a sample size on the order of 100. I'm glad you pointed this out.
    - tokai 11y ago
      Yeah, it seems weak. In figure 1 it is obvious that a spike of 7 students carry the negative correlation. Without them it would disappear.
    - cbhl 11y ago
      Considering that the sample questionnaires have to be administered by hand to each child, how would you scale the sample size for a study in this space? It looks like the study that introduced the EQ-C and SQ-C in 2009 was only run on 1256 "parents of typically developing children" and 265 "children with Autism".[0] [0] http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2009_Auyeung_etal_ChildEQSQ_JADD.pdf http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2009_Auyeung_eta... [0 (alternate)] http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-009-0772-x http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-009-0772-x
      - j2kun 11y ago
        Correlation of 0.2 is negligible with any sample size. The potential for invalid inferences is only pronounced by a small sample size. A samples size of a thousand is much better. But with n=100, r=0.2 there is a bigger chance that local factors influence the result than that the observed association says anything about human nature.
- tokai 11y ago
  Later in the results section you have: >There was a negative correlation between EQ-C and the Calculation Skills composite score with greater empathizing predicting lower math achievement Edit: A "previously unknown predictor" can both be a positive or negative predictor.
- jccc 11y ago
  From the conclusion section: "We found no evidence for a relationship between systemizing and math achievement after accounting for general cognitive and reading abilities. There was, however, a negative association between empathizing and calculation ability that was more pronounced in girls."
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 11y ago
  Submitted title was "Empathy and social skills found to be negative predictors of mathematical ability". We've changed that to a quote from the abstract. I'm not sure the two are different enough to justify calling the first one linkbait, but it's better to stick to language from the article.
csense 11y ago
They seem to be hypothesizing that the mechanism causing this result is that math anxiety can be transmitted like a disease, and lower empathy individuals are somewhat immune. It would be worthwhile to figure out what makes math anxiety transmittable, and what other attitudes might be transmitted by a similar mechanism and lead to measurable impact.
- noobermin 11y ago
  That's one hypothesis, although they hypothesized this is true for the girls, at least specifically picking up cues from math anxious teachers. However, the social awareness isn't as strong in boys as they say, which lend more evidence to the hypothesis that it's most a "social distraction" thing. Also, they specifically found that Math Anxeity didn't explain the correlation between lack of empathizing and math achievement in their sample set. Altogether, this seems to violate intuition on multiple levels. One hypothesis they push is that more social children are more easily distracted?
  - analyst74 11y ago
    Another potential explanation is that kids with high empathy spend more time socializing, which is partly why they have higher empathy. And kids with lower empathy spend less time socializing, and more time on subjects they can do themselves, like math. Note that the effect of socializing -> higher empathy -> better at socializing -> enjoys socializing is a feedback loop.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      empathy != extroversion Empathic introverts will spend a lot of time on their own because being hyper-aware of other people's emotions is draining.
      - jacobolus 11y ago
        In this case, “empathy quotient” = how the parent answers the following questionnaire: • My child likes to look after other people. • My child often doesn’t understand why some things upset other people so much. • My child would not cry or get upset if a character in a film died. • My child is quick to notice when people are joking. • My child enjoys cutting up worms, or pulling the legs off insects. • My child has stolen something they wanted from their sibling or friend. • My child has trouble forming friendships. • When playing with other children, my child spontaneously takes turns and shares toys. • My child can be blunt giving their opinions, even when these may upset someone. • My child would enjoy looking after a pet. • My child is often rude or impolite without realising it. • My child has been in trouble for physical bullying. • At school, when my child understands something they can easily explain it clearly to others. • My child has one or two close friends, as well as several other friends. • My child listens to others’ opinions, even when different from their own. • My child shows concern when others are upset. • My child can seem so preoccupied with their own thoughts that they don’t notice others getting bored. • My child blames other children for things that they themselves have done. • My child gets very upset if they see an animal in pain. • My child sometimes pushes or pinches someone if they are annoying them. • My child can easily tell when another person wants to enter into conversation with them. • My child is good at negotiating for what they want. • My child would worry about how another child would feel if they weren’t invited to a party. • My child gets upset at seeing others crying or in pain. • My child likes to help new children integrate in class. • My child has been in trouble for name-calling or teasing. • My child tends to resort to physical aggression to get what they want. (For each question, answer is a choice among “strongly agree”, “slightly agree”, “slightly disagree”, and “strongly disagree”. In each case, the “more empathetic” side of the answers is scored either 1 for the “slightly” answer or 2 for the “strongly” answer, whereas both answers on the “less empathetic” side are scored zero. Overall EQ score is the sum of those.)
onetimePete 11y ago
Empathy and social skills found negligible predictors in contributing to humanity's longterm survival
- beatpanda 11y ago
  Ladies and gentlemen, your 2016 Masters of the Universe.
noobermin 11y ago
As a note to people fearful of indulging past the abstract, from what I understand, Scientific Reports are meant to be read across a field of science, so it should be somewhat approachable compared to your average research paper. I found it readable and interesting with only a few confusing moments that didn't distract from the main point.
- argonaut 11y ago
  To be more accurate, Scientific Reports is a second tier "open access" journal where papers are evaluated for scientific validity, but not for scientific impact/importance. So not to be confused with the actual Nature journal.
analyst74 11y ago
So are kids with higher empathy bad at math, leading to the environment where being bad at math makes you more popular? Or is that those kids realize being bad at math makes them more popular, thus intentionally neglect or even pretend to be bad at math?
jacobolus 11y ago
Looks to me mostly like a cluster of kids with very high “calculation skills” and relatively low “empathizing quotient” is skewing their result. If you remove that group, the remaining data looks pretty uncorrelated at a glance: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23011/figures/1 http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23011/figures/1 “Math Fluency is a measure of speeded application of arithmetic procedures. Problems included a mix of addition, subtraction, and multiplication with operands up to 10. Children were given 3 minutes to complete as many as possible. We computed a Calculation Skills composite measure, which combines the Calculation and Math Fluency subtests, in order to have a single measure capturing arithmetic ability. “The primary guardian of each child completed the Combined Empathy Quotient-Child (EQ-C) and Systemizing Quotient-Child (SQ-C). The questionnaire was designed to be parent-report in order to avoid variance associated with children’s reading and comprehension abilities.” Alternative summary: “Out of 112 children, among the bottom 105 children when ranked by arithmetic calculation speed, there’s no statistically significant correlation between arithmetic calculation speed and parental assessment of child empathy. The parents of the top 7 performers by arithmetic calculation speed uniformly think their kids have below-average empathy.”
- potatolicious 11y ago
  "If we remove the samples that we don't like, we get the result we want!" Note: I'm not a fan of reading too much into studies, but come on.
  - Mz 11y ago
    I am glad it was noted. I don't really have time to read this (edit: and the comment by jacobolus saves me the effort). I have good empathy and social skills and innate math ability. My ex husband and our oldest son both suck at all three of those. I think it is entirely fair to say that some oddball subgroup is skewing the results. It is no different from discussing mean, median and mode in real estate data. Ever heard of the book "How to lie with statistics"?
    - asdfologist 11y ago
noname123 11y ago
"No widely accepted cognitive theory explains savants' combination of talent and deficit. It has been suggested that individuals with autism are biased towards detail-focused processing and that this cognitive style predisposes individuals either with or without autism to savant talents. Another hypothesis is that savants hyper-systemize, thereby giving an impression of talent. Hyper-systemizing is an extreme state in the empathizing–systemizing theory that classifies people based on their skills in empathizing with others versus systemizing facts about the external world. Also, the attention to detail of savants is a consequence of enhanced perception or sensory hypersensitivity in these unique individuals." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome) I am very fascinated by the semantics vs. syntax of empathy. Suppose you have a savant who is good at systematic identification of literary characters, or criminal profiling or DSM-IV case files; in another words, he or she is very good at reading people and classifying them into logical/hierarchical systems of mental, historical and social backgrounds; and miming their behavior when interacting with them, just as a savant with photographic memory can "mime" the Manhattan skyline in drawing. Would we classify such a person as empathetic or sociopathic? If their empathy comes not from a human emotional instinct but from logical deduction?
- Mz 11y ago
  I suspect that would depend upon whether they "cared" for the welfare of the individual they could read or if they "used" that info against them. I personally don't think there is a clear line between those two things. I have known many people with natural social skills who routinely used them to influence social settings to their personal benefit, often without being particularly noticed by most of the people involved. I think it is more complicated than a simple binary choice.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    As I understand it, sociopaths/psychopaths are entirely inner directed. They either don't notice the damage they're doing or they power trip on it. They literally don't see other people as people at all - they see other people as resources they can play with and consume. Empaths may be manipulative, but it's hard to be a master of manipulation when you're aware your actions are making someone else unhappy and this makes you unhappy too.
jackcosgrove 11y ago
I think this has to do with abstract reasoning skills. If you can abstract shapes and numbers well, you can abstract people well. You begin to see people as numbers and objects.
ilostmykeys 11y ago
Empathic individuals tend act from a position of deep understanding. If given a menial task that has no deep connection to their reality, i.e. no purpose they can connect with, then they'll just ignore it. Their brain will not even touch it. A deeply empathic person can calculate, and more generally think and intuit, better than an emotionally detached person as long as they can emotionally connect with the task being given to them.
- thescribe 11y ago
  >A deeply empathic person can calculate, and more generally think and intuit, better than an emotionally detached person as long as they can emotionally connect with the task being given to them. Do you have good numbers to back that up?
  - elevenfist 11y ago
    Edit: It's important to note though that this might be just another attempt by psychologists to paint technical folk as lacking empathy. Usually people who make such claims lack empathy themselves. What @ilostmykeys is saying is probably based on personal experience, which matches up with my own. Similarly I've found low empathetic people are much more likely to enjoy calculation-based tasks, not just pure mathematics but video games, and video games like "The Witness," min-maxing and competitive numbers games like starcraft, dota, league of legends, etc. A high-empathetic person can have great difficulty initially understanding why anyone would enjoy playing these games, it's difficult to explain, but when compared with real life video games/simulations feel like a void, there's very little to actually connect with, and in effect it feels like you are doing very little (even if you are making great efforts).
aaron695 11y ago
Empathizing is dumb. Calculation ability is smart. Surprise is where? Empathizing is why people give $10 to a local kids soccer team but let kids die in poor countries missing vaccines.
belorn 11y ago
"The questionnaire was designed to be parent-report in order to avoid variance associated with children’s reading and comprehension abilities.” That seems to be as removing smaller variables by introducing a bigger one, which seems counter to current standards. When a child is being diagnosed, the physiologist always talk with the child, as its very easy to get the wrong conclusion by hearing the child being described. Its not uncommon for a diagnose to be first suspected from the descriptions that the parents gives, and then be reverted after just a short interview with the child. After reading the article, I also wonder what correlation there is with high math achievements and being a victim of bullying, and how bullying effects the perceived social and empathy skills of a child.
- cperciva 11y ago
  After reading the article, I also wonder what correlation there is with high math achievements and being a victim of bullying, and how bullying effects the perceived social and empathy skills of a child. There can be causation in the opposite direction, too. One of the reasons I was so driven to excel as a child was to prove that I was superior to those who bullied me.
- Noughmad 11y ago
  The parent-report thing is definitely problematic here. Parents will never say "my child is bad at everything", and will often avoid saysing "my child is good at everything", especially if they have other kids. So they will generally pick one trait the kid is good at, and say he or she is bad at the other one. Usually math (and other school subjects) are much easier to measure, so "social skills" just get thrown around to compensate. For example, I am very good at math, and have been told my entire life that I'm not "real-life smart" or that I have high IQ but low EQ. But now that I'm older I found that I'm pretty good at emphatizing, understanding and predicting other people reactions. Then again, quantifying empathy is hard, and I'm pretty sure that parents would often get it wrong even without the bias. Some kids are sad when a character in a book/movie dies, but will never show it.
Bjartr 11y ago
For those like me who were curious about the contents of the Empathy/Systemizing Quotient test itself I believe I found it as well as the scoring key for both the child and adult version (in case you want to know where you yourself fall on the scale) These links are to Google Docs previews of .doc files listed at http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests ------------------------------------------------- Combined Empathy/Systemizing Quotient - Child https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ-SQ_Child.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ-SQ_Child_Scoring_Key.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... ------------------------------------------------- Empathy Quotient - Adult https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ2.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ40_ScoringKey.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... ------------------------------------------------- Systemizing Quotient - Adult https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/SQ.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/SQ_Scoring_Key.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 11y ago
Curious to see no mention (in the paper or comments here) of previous neuro-imaging experiments that showed that brain networks associated with empathy and those associated with logical thought are antagonists, and it does not appear to be possible to have both active at the same time: http://blog.case.edu/think/2012/10/30/empathy_represses_analytic_thought_and_vice_versa http://blog.case.edu/think/2012/10/30/empathy_represses_anal... There's a long pop-science suspicion of this, dating back to Jungian psychology (where Thinking vs. Feeling was considered a primitive dichotomy). It's enshrined in many of our stereotypes about socially awkward nerds, and also in the structure of the tech industry (which has separate departments for sales vs. engineering, and common wisdom that you need a hustler & a hacker for startups). This seems much more likely, as an explanation, than ideas that poor math performance may be transmitted socially, although of course it'd need to be rigorously tested in an experiment to be proven.
- theoh 11y ago
  The idea that it's a social thing rather than a biological thing feels like a weaker claim. At the risk of sounding a bit reactionary, it seems a bit like claims relating to sex or race: there's a lot of pressure not to discover "natural" rather than socially-constructed differences.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I love how the discovery that humans are not all the same species has been completely glossed over. Humans are at least three separate genetic lineages (maybe more) comprising of Africans, African and Neanderthal hybrids (all non-Africans), and a third hybrid made up of African/Neanderthals/Denosovians (Melanesians).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - _yosefk 11y ago
      For what definition of "species" is this true? (The definition I know is, a male A and a female B belong to the same species if B can give birth to A's children who can then themselves reproduce. By this definition, all humans are the same species. This is not to say that there aren't significant genetic differences between groups of humans coming from different lineages, just that it doesn't make them different species according to the definition I know.)
leeny 11y ago
If I'm reading this correctly, calculation skills are what suffer with increased empathizing, rather than ability to solve applied math problems. Is that right? Are there examples of what constitutes calculation vs. applied problem solving for the purposes of this study? EDIT: Looks like calculations are straight up calculations, and applied problems are story problems. http://achievement-test.com/testing-options/woodcock-johnson-iii-tests http://achievement-test.com/testing-options/woodcock-johnson...
asciimo 11y ago
Good thing we have computers to augment our calculation abilities. Maybe they can augment our empathy, too (http://www.amednews.com/article/20111206/profession/312069996/8/ http://www.amednews.com/article/20111206/profession/31206999...).
samch 11y ago
Like many of the others here, I'm not terribly surprised by this. I learned the distinction by watching the original Star Trek as a kid. Vulcans represented the logical, calculating race, while humans were characterized as the emotional, sometimes illogical race. Spock, of course, represented the complex balance between the two.
lgleason 11y ago
No surprise there....testosterone probably plays a role. https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70?t=1311 https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70?t=1311
kaitai 11y ago
That's why good profs don't do spontaneous calculations at the board. They need to be done in the privacy of one's own home.
dschiptsov 11y ago
And empathizing is? Measured in?

189 points by randomname2 11y ago

j2kun 11y ago

I'm going to read the rest of this paper, but it looks like the title here is misleading. The last sentence of the abstract: > These results identify empathy, and social skills more generally, as previously unknown predictors of mathematical achievement. Edit: added: > Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no relationship between systemizing and math achievement after controlling for domain general abilities and no relationship between the systemizing brain type (greater discrepancy between systemizing and empathizing) and math achievement. More edits: The "negative correlation" turns out to be only for "calculation" and the values are r=-0.22, p=0.02, with a sample size of around a hundred individuals. This is a negligible effect by any stretch of the imagination. Sounds like the authors did their diligence in writing this up, and it's the submitter's fault for the linkbait headline.

mklim 11y ago
The title is correct. That sentence just means that they're predictors, not necessarily that they're positive predictors. As in, if you know one you can predict the other. In the results section: > There was a negative correlation between EQ-C and the Calculation Skills composite score with greater empathizing predicting lower math achievement (r(110) = −0.22, p = 0.02).
- j2kun 11y ago
  A correlation of 0.2 is negligible. Especially with a sample size on the order of 100. I'm glad you pointed this out.
  - tokai 11y ago
    Yeah, it seems weak. In figure 1 it is obvious that a spike of 7 students carry the negative correlation. Without them it would disappear.
  - cbhl 11y ago
    Considering that the sample questionnaires have to be administered by hand to each child, how would you scale the sample size for a study in this space? It looks like the study that introduced the EQ-C and SQ-C in 2009 was only run on 1256 "parents of typically developing children" and 265 "children with Autism".[0] [0] http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2009_Auyeung_etal_ChildEQSQ_JADD.pdf http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2009_Auyeung_eta... [0 (alternate)] http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-009-0772-x http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-009-0772-x
    - j2kun 11y ago
      Correlation of 0.2 is negligible with any sample size. The potential for invalid inferences is only pronounced by a small sample size. A samples size of a thousand is much better. But with n=100, r=0.2 there is a bigger chance that local factors influence the result than that the observed association says anything about human nature.
tokai 11y ago
Later in the results section you have: >There was a negative correlation between EQ-C and the Calculation Skills composite score with greater empathizing predicting lower math achievement Edit: A "previously unknown predictor" can both be a positive or negative predictor.
jccc 11y ago
From the conclusion section: "We found no evidence for a relationship between systemizing and math achievement after accounting for general cognitive and reading abilities. There was, however, a negative association between empathizing and calculation ability that was more pronounced in girls."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dang 11y ago
Submitted title was "Empathy and social skills found to be negative predictors of mathematical ability". We've changed that to a quote from the abstract. I'm not sure the two are different enough to justify calling the first one linkbait, but it's better to stick to language from the article.

csense 11y ago

They seem to be hypothesizing that the mechanism causing this result is that math anxiety can be transmitted like a disease, and lower empathy individuals are somewhat immune. It would be worthwhile to figure out what makes math anxiety transmittable, and what other attitudes might be transmitted by a similar mechanism and lead to measurable impact.

noobermin 11y ago
That's one hypothesis, although they hypothesized this is true for the girls, at least specifically picking up cues from math anxious teachers. However, the social awareness isn't as strong in boys as they say, which lend more evidence to the hypothesis that it's most a "social distraction" thing. Also, they specifically found that Math Anxeity didn't explain the correlation between lack of empathizing and math achievement in their sample set. Altogether, this seems to violate intuition on multiple levels. One hypothesis they push is that more social children are more easily distracted?
- analyst74 11y ago
  Another potential explanation is that kids with high empathy spend more time socializing, which is partly why they have higher empathy. And kids with lower empathy spend less time socializing, and more time on subjects they can do themselves, like math. Note that the effect of socializing -> higher empathy -> better at socializing -> enjoys socializing is a feedback loop.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    empathy != extroversion Empathic introverts will spend a lot of time on their own because being hyper-aware of other people's emotions is draining.
    - jacobolus 11y ago
      In this case, “empathy quotient” = how the parent answers the following questionnaire: • My child likes to look after other people. • My child often doesn’t understand why some things upset other people so much. • My child would not cry or get upset if a character in a film died. • My child is quick to notice when people are joking. • My child enjoys cutting up worms, or pulling the legs off insects. • My child has stolen something they wanted from their sibling or friend. • My child has trouble forming friendships. • When playing with other children, my child spontaneously takes turns and shares toys. • My child can be blunt giving their opinions, even when these may upset someone. • My child would enjoy looking after a pet. • My child is often rude or impolite without realising it. • My child has been in trouble for physical bullying. • At school, when my child understands something they can easily explain it clearly to others. • My child has one or two close friends, as well as several other friends. • My child listens to others’ opinions, even when different from their own. • My child shows concern when others are upset. • My child can seem so preoccupied with their own thoughts that they don’t notice others getting bored. • My child blames other children for things that they themselves have done. • My child gets very upset if they see an animal in pain. • My child sometimes pushes or pinches someone if they are annoying them. • My child can easily tell when another person wants to enter into conversation with them. • My child is good at negotiating for what they want. • My child would worry about how another child would feel if they weren’t invited to a party. • My child gets upset at seeing others crying or in pain. • My child likes to help new children integrate in class. • My child has been in trouble for name-calling or teasing. • My child tends to resort to physical aggression to get what they want. (For each question, answer is a choice among “strongly agree”, “slightly agree”, “slightly disagree”, and “strongly disagree”. In each case, the “more empathetic” side of the answers is scored either 1 for the “slightly” answer or 2 for the “strongly” answer, whereas both answers on the “less empathetic” side are scored zero. Overall EQ score is the sum of those.)

onetimePete 11y ago

Empathy and social skills found negligible predictors in contributing to humanity's longterm survival

beatpanda 11y ago
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2016 Masters of the Universe.

noobermin 11y ago

As a note to people fearful of indulging past the abstract, from what I understand, Scientific Reports are meant to be read across a field of science, so it should be somewhat approachable compared to your average research paper. I found it readable and interesting with only a few confusing moments that didn't distract from the main point.

argonaut 11y ago
To be more accurate, Scientific Reports is a second tier "open access" journal where papers are evaluated for scientific validity, but not for scientific impact/importance. So not to be confused with the actual Nature journal.

analyst74 11y ago

So are kids with higher empathy bad at math, leading to the environment where being bad at math makes you more popular? Or is that those kids realize being bad at math makes them more popular, thus intentionally neglect or even pretend to be bad at math?

jacobolus 11y ago

Looks to me mostly like a cluster of kids with very high “calculation skills” and relatively low “empathizing quotient” is skewing their result. If you remove that group, the remaining data looks pretty uncorrelated at a glance: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23011/figures/1 http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23011/figures/1 “Math Fluency is a measure of speeded application of arithmetic procedures. Problems included a mix of addition, subtraction, and multiplication with operands up to 10. Children were given 3 minutes to complete as many as possible. We computed a Calculation Skills composite measure, which combines the Calculation and Math Fluency subtests, in order to have a single measure capturing arithmetic ability. “The primary guardian of each child completed the Combined Empathy Quotient-Child (EQ-C) and Systemizing Quotient-Child (SQ-C). The questionnaire was designed to be parent-report in order to avoid variance associated with children’s reading and comprehension abilities.” Alternative summary: “Out of 112 children, among the bottom 105 children when ranked by arithmetic calculation speed, there’s no statistically significant correlation between arithmetic calculation speed and parental assessment of child empathy. The parents of the top 7 performers by arithmetic calculation speed uniformly think their kids have below-average empathy.”

potatolicious 11y ago
"If we remove the samples that we don't like, we get the result we want!" Note: I'm not a fan of reading too much into studies, but come on.
- Mz 11y ago
  I am glad it was noted. I don't really have time to read this (edit: and the comment by jacobolus saves me the effort). I have good empathy and social skills and innate math ability. My ex husband and our oldest son both suck at all three of those. I think it is entirely fair to say that some oddball subgroup is skewing the results. It is no different from discussing mean, median and mode in real estate data. Ever heard of the book "How to lie with statistics"?
  - asdfologist 11y ago

noname123 11y ago

"No widely accepted cognitive theory explains savants' combination of talent and deficit. It has been suggested that individuals with autism are biased towards detail-focused processing and that this cognitive style predisposes individuals either with or without autism to savant talents. Another hypothesis is that savants hyper-systemize, thereby giving an impression of talent. Hyper-systemizing is an extreme state in the empathizing–systemizing theory that classifies people based on their skills in empathizing with others versus systemizing facts about the external world. Also, the attention to detail of savants is a consequence of enhanced perception or sensory hypersensitivity in these unique individuals." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome) I am very fascinated by the semantics vs. syntax of empathy. Suppose you have a savant who is good at systematic identification of literary characters, or criminal profiling or DSM-IV case files; in another words, he or she is very good at reading people and classifying them into logical/hierarchical systems of mental, historical and social backgrounds; and miming their behavior when interacting with them, just as a savant with photographic memory can "mime" the Manhattan skyline in drawing. Would we classify such a person as empathetic or sociopathic? If their empathy comes not from a human emotional instinct but from logical deduction?

Mz 11y ago
I suspect that would depend upon whether they "cared" for the welfare of the individual they could read or if they "used" that info against them. I personally don't think there is a clear line between those two things. I have known many people with natural social skills who routinely used them to influence social settings to their personal benefit, often without being particularly noticed by most of the people involved. I think it is more complicated than a simple binary choice.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  As I understand it, sociopaths/psychopaths are entirely inner directed. They either don't notice the damage they're doing or they power trip on it. They literally don't see other people as people at all - they see other people as resources they can play with and consume. Empaths may be manipulative, but it's hard to be a master of manipulation when you're aware your actions are making someone else unhappy and this makes you unhappy too.

jackcosgrove 11y ago

I think this has to do with abstract reasoning skills. If you can abstract shapes and numbers well, you can abstract people well. You begin to see people as numbers and objects.

ilostmykeys 11y ago

Empathic individuals tend act from a position of deep understanding. If given a menial task that has no deep connection to their reality, i.e. no purpose they can connect with, then they'll just ignore it. Their brain will not even touch it. A deeply empathic person can calculate, and more generally think and intuit, better than an emotionally detached person as long as they can emotionally connect with the task being given to them.

thescribe 11y ago
>A deeply empathic person can calculate, and more generally think and intuit, better than an emotionally detached person as long as they can emotionally connect with the task being given to them. Do you have good numbers to back that up?
- elevenfist 11y ago
  Edit: It's important to note though that this might be just another attempt by psychologists to paint technical folk as lacking empathy. Usually people who make such claims lack empathy themselves. What @ilostmykeys is saying is probably based on personal experience, which matches up with my own. Similarly I've found low empathetic people are much more likely to enjoy calculation-based tasks, not just pure mathematics but video games, and video games like "The Witness," min-maxing and competitive numbers games like starcraft, dota, league of legends, etc. A high-empathetic person can have great difficulty initially understanding why anyone would enjoy playing these games, it's difficult to explain, but when compared with real life video games/simulations feel like a void, there's very little to actually connect with, and in effect it feels like you are doing very little (even if you are making great efforts).

aaron695 11y ago

Empathizing is dumb. Calculation ability is smart. Surprise is where? Empathizing is why people give $10 to a local kids soccer team but let kids die in poor countries missing vaccines.

belorn 11y ago

"The questionnaire was designed to be parent-report in order to avoid variance associated with children’s reading and comprehension abilities.” That seems to be as removing smaller variables by introducing a bigger one, which seems counter to current standards. When a child is being diagnosed, the physiologist always talk with the child, as its very easy to get the wrong conclusion by hearing the child being described. Its not uncommon for a diagnose to be first suspected from the descriptions that the parents gives, and then be reverted after just a short interview with the child. After reading the article, I also wonder what correlation there is with high math achievements and being a victim of bullying, and how bullying effects the perceived social and empathy skills of a child.

cperciva 11y ago
After reading the article, I also wonder what correlation there is with high math achievements and being a victim of bullying, and how bullying effects the perceived social and empathy skills of a child. There can be causation in the opposite direction, too. One of the reasons I was so driven to excel as a child was to prove that I was superior to those who bullied me.
Noughmad 11y ago
The parent-report thing is definitely problematic here. Parents will never say "my child is bad at everything", and will often avoid saysing "my child is good at everything", especially if they have other kids. So they will generally pick one trait the kid is good at, and say he or she is bad at the other one. Usually math (and other school subjects) are much easier to measure, so "social skills" just get thrown around to compensate. For example, I am very good at math, and have been told my entire life that I'm not "real-life smart" or that I have high IQ but low EQ. But now that I'm older I found that I'm pretty good at emphatizing, understanding and predicting other people reactions. Then again, quantifying empathy is hard, and I'm pretty sure that parents would often get it wrong even without the bias. Some kids are sad when a character in a book/movie dies, but will never show it.

Bjartr 11y ago

For those like me who were curious about the contents of the Empathy/Systemizing Quotient test itself I believe I found it as well as the scoring key for both the child and adult version (in case you want to know where you yourself fall on the scale) These links are to Google Docs previews of .doc files listed at http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests ------------------------------------------------- Combined Empathy/Systemizing Quotient - Child https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ-SQ_Child.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ-SQ_Child_Scoring_Key.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... ------------------------------------------------- Empathy Quotient - Adult https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ2.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/EQ40_ScoringKey.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... ------------------------------------------------- Systemizing Quotient - Adult https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/SQ.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs... Scoring Key https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/SQ_Scoring_Key.doc https://docs.google.com/viewer?embedded=true&url=http://docs...

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nostrademons 11y ago

Curious to see no mention (in the paper or comments here) of previous neuro-imaging experiments that showed that brain networks associated with empathy and those associated with logical thought are antagonists, and it does not appear to be possible to have both active at the same time: http://blog.case.edu/think/2012/10/30/empathy_represses_analytic_thought_and_vice_versa http://blog.case.edu/think/2012/10/30/empathy_represses_anal... There's a long pop-science suspicion of this, dating back to Jungian psychology (where Thinking vs. Feeling was considered a primitive dichotomy). It's enshrined in many of our stereotypes about socially awkward nerds, and also in the structure of the tech industry (which has separate departments for sales vs. engineering, and common wisdom that you need a hustler & a hacker for startups). This seems much more likely, as an explanation, than ideas that poor math performance may be transmitted socially, although of course it'd need to be rigorously tested in an experiment to be proven.

theoh 11y ago
The idea that it's a social thing rather than a biological thing feels like a weaker claim. At the risk of sounding a bit reactionary, it seems a bit like claims relating to sex or race: there's a lot of pressure not to discover "natural" rather than socially-constructed differences.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  I love how the discovery that humans are not all the same species has been completely glossed over. Humans are at least three separate genetic lineages (maybe more) comprising of Africans, African and Neanderthal hybrids (all non-Africans), and a third hybrid made up of African/Neanderthals/Denosovians (Melanesians).
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  - _yosefk 11y ago
    For what definition of "species" is this true? (The definition I know is, a male A and a female B belong to the same species if B can give birth to A's children who can then themselves reproduce. By this definition, all humans are the same species. This is not to say that there aren't significant genetic differences between groups of humans coming from different lineages, just that it doesn't make them different species according to the definition I know.)

leeny 11y ago

If I'm reading this correctly, calculation skills are what suffer with increased empathizing, rather than ability to solve applied math problems. Is that right? Are there examples of what constitutes calculation vs. applied problem solving for the purposes of this study? EDIT: Looks like calculations are straight up calculations, and applied problems are story problems. http://achievement-test.com/testing-options/woodcock-johnson-iii-tests http://achievement-test.com/testing-options/woodcock-johnson...

asciimo 11y ago

Good thing we have computers to augment our calculation abilities. Maybe they can augment our empathy, too (http://www.amednews.com/article/20111206/profession/312069996/8/ http://www.amednews.com/article/20111206/profession/31206999...).

samch 11y ago

Like many of the others here, I'm not terribly surprised by this. I learned the distinction by watching the original Star Trek as a kid. Vulcans represented the logical, calculating race, while humans were characterized as the emotional, sometimes illogical race. Spock, of course, represented the complex balance between the two.

lgleason 11y ago

No surprise there....testosterone probably plays a role. https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70?t=1311 https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70?t=1311

kaitai 11y ago

That's why good profs don't do spontaneous calculations at the board. They need to be done in the privacy of one's own home.

dschiptsov 11y ago

And empathizing is? Measured in?