6 ms·

The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-of-a-longer-post-ive-been-planning-t

The empathizing–systemizing theory seems to be on shaky ground: http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-of-a-longer-post-ive-been-planning-to http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164069138209/in-lieu-o... http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-cohen-miscellany http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/164123186154/baron-coh... The weirdest result might be that a pathology that one would ascribe to the empathizing side, borderline personality disorder (BPD), actually positively correlates with measures of systemizing, so there is a strange overlap between BPD and autism, the pathology one associates with systemizing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/ What's more, there is no clear sex difference in empathy: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179336 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... --- 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: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018... 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): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608015001818 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160801... So the underlying difference here might simply be in innate preferences to process information that is in a social context vs an arbitrary context. Autists have a lower preference for the social context, which is essentially a difference in value function, so value from epistemic/predictive accuracy independent of norms gets more weight. 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: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00028.x http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb0... https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...

s-shellfish 8y ago
This isn't strange at all (at least to me). I've been misdiagnosed as bpd in facilities that were socially chaotic. People who diagnosed me were also selectively biased to what information about me was indicative of past, present and expected behavior. It was a very traumatizing experience and the sad thing is this happens frequently in mental health care across the US to autistic individuals. I can understand emotions in a systemized way but it requires watching patterns of every individual I interact with to learn. It also is very scary because I don't want to get to know anyone so well I accidentally mistake deep insecurities for topics to attempt polite conversation over. Thus, highly selective with individuals and how many (too many is cognitively overloading, but I've adapted fairly well on my own (somehow)) at my job, which - I'm a software developer, so although I'm not surrounded by people who have autism, I am surrounded by people who have a greater tolerance and higher sensitivity to neourological diversity. I'm female. My mom dresses me mostly (most of my clothes are her old clothes). She's a beautician. I'm 32. Mental health care is annoying because of course BPD diagnosis has historically been highly likely, due to superficial snap judgements based on appearance. I had a coworker tell me flatly that appearances don't matter and this was very liberating. I continue to work on managing to communicate myself perfectly - great irony anticipating peculiar usage of language. Pedantry, always want to make sure the words I use are internally definitely correctly therefore used correctly (but I've been able to simplify the importance of this down to business logic definitions and computer science / programming languages / software definitions). I am hoping I find an autism therapist that can actually help me in real life. At least with venturing out outside of working hours to create some semblance of a social life. Systemizing is pattern matching. It's always hard when 2 people's patterns don't match perfectly. Calling it a willingness to work together or understand one another is so oversimplified with respect to the delicate balance process of developing relationships, it's not even funny. Preference, socializing. I would say I have high preference to socialize where I have trust for both my expected pattern of behavior and people I trust - that their pattern of behavior will be relatively stable and neither myself nor they will be hurtful in any way. It never matters if it's one person or a group. Emotions run through people in groups in the same systematic way they do in individuals. Being perfectly calm all the time or just flat affect to stabilize groups that have related themselves to me in some unknown variant is really hard, and looping group behavior of 'i have an emotional outburst' - implies -> the group does generally, this drives me crazy because I can always relate it to myself therefore blame myself internally. BPD is the same pattern mentality assuming that diagnosis was correct at one point of me (again, relative to social environment), no ability to communicate self because people have their theories they depend on for their survival (hostile healthcare centers) or control it (this is taken as hostile behavior in such places, even though the control element is really only intended to control myself and my emotions, not anyone else). Stuck in between contradictory social environments with established rules (that may contradict or conflict), either deeply ingrained behavior from the past with new context, or multiple conflicting social environments. It's a stigmatized illness. BPD is not being able to keep up with all of them, or not being able to generate/interpret rules quickly enough to manage self behavior in all, possibily unchosen social environments. I would never want to go back into the hell that gets me labeled as BPD because it's one of the worst labels to carry. There's always the expectation that "I'm the bad one" that gets carried with the diagnosis. But mental illness labels in general, always seem pointless to me in the long term. Can always explain them all (except ASPD, that's intent to cause harm) in terms of individual behavior relative to social environmental expectations and judgements. This can all be systemized. This is probably why I get labeled as a hostile element in so called 'cattle mental health centers' (phrase comes from a PsyD I saw). Intent is never to cause harm. Everything just often turns into patterns, or systems, to me, I'd prefer to see it as a gift, not a curse. Hard rules to not systemize individuals are of supreme importance.

s-shellfish 8y ago

This isn't strange at all (at least to me). I've been misdiagnosed as bpd in facilities that were socially chaotic. People who diagnosed me were also selectively biased to what information about me was indicative of past, present and expected behavior. It was a very traumatizing experience and the sad thing is this happens frequently in mental health care across the US to autistic individuals. I can understand emotions in a systemized way but it requires watching patterns of every individual I interact with to learn. It also is very scary because I don't want to get to know anyone so well I accidentally mistake deep insecurities for topics to attempt polite conversation over. Thus, highly selective with individuals and how many (too many is cognitively overloading, but I've adapted fairly well on my own (somehow)) at my job, which - I'm a software developer, so although I'm not surrounded by people who have autism, I am surrounded by people who have a greater tolerance and higher sensitivity to neourological diversity. I'm female. My mom dresses me mostly (most of my clothes are her old clothes). She's a beautician. I'm 32. Mental health care is annoying because of course BPD diagnosis has historically been highly likely, due to superficial snap judgements based on appearance. I had a coworker tell me flatly that appearances don't matter and this was very liberating. I continue to work on managing to communicate myself perfectly - great irony anticipating peculiar usage of language. Pedantry, always want to make sure the words I use are internally definitely correctly therefore used correctly (but I've been able to simplify the importance of this down to business logic definitions and computer science / programming languages / software definitions). I am hoping I find an autism therapist that can actually help me in real life. At least with venturing out outside of working hours to create some semblance of a social life. Systemizing is pattern matching. It's always hard when 2 people's patterns don't match perfectly. Calling it a willingness to work together or understand one another is so oversimplified with respect to the delicate balance process of developing relationships, it's not even funny. Preference, socializing. I would say I have high preference to socialize where I have trust for both my expected pattern of behavior and people I trust - that their pattern of behavior will be relatively stable and neither myself nor they will be hurtful in any way. It never matters if it's one person or a group. Emotions run through people in groups in the same systematic way they do in individuals. Being perfectly calm all the time or just flat affect to stabilize groups that have related themselves to me in some unknown variant is really hard, and looping group behavior of 'i have an emotional outburst' - implies -> the group does generally, this drives me crazy because I can always relate it to myself therefore blame myself internally. BPD is the same pattern mentality assuming that diagnosis was correct at one point of me (again, relative to social environment), no ability to communicate self because people have their theories they depend on for their survival (hostile healthcare centers) or control it (this is taken as hostile behavior in such places, even though the control element is really only intended to control myself and my emotions, not anyone else). Stuck in between contradictory social environments with established rules (that may contradict or conflict), either deeply ingrained behavior from the past with new context, or multiple conflicting social environments. It's a stigmatized illness. BPD is not being able to keep up with all of them, or not being able to generate/interpret rules quickly enough to manage self behavior in all, possibily unchosen social environments. I would never want to go back into the hell that gets me labeled as BPD because it's one of the worst labels to carry. There's always the expectation that "I'm the bad one" that gets carried with the diagnosis. But mental illness labels in general, always seem pointless to me in the long term. Can always explain them all (except ASPD, that's intent to cause harm) in terms of individual behavior relative to social environmental expectations and judgements. This can all be systemized. This is probably why I get labeled as a hostile element in so called 'cattle mental health centers' (phrase comes from a PsyD I saw). Intent is never to cause harm. Everything just often turns into patterns, or systems, to me, I'd prefer to see it as a gift, not a curse. Hard rules to not systemize individuals are of supreme importance.