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Empathy among students in engineering programmes
- mwgriffith 14y agoDoes the register think it's the onion??
- angersock 14y agoEh, once in a while it's nice to see them raise their quality of reporting.
- MrMatters 14y agoAs far as I know, it's much more like a tabloid than satire (I'm not British though).
- glenjamin 14y agoAs a rule the register's articles/reporting are based in/on factual events, but often take an incredulous or satirical tone. This is normally confined to the headline or the summary line, but sometimes applies to longer pieces.
- ramayac 14y agoThis is the exact thing I was thinking "Is this some kind of joke? like an Onion article?". Well, as H G Keyserling once said: "Generalizing is always wrong".
- logn 14y ago"The results were clear-cut, apparently: engineering students cared nothing for other human beings' feelings and had few of their own. They were cold-hearted and uncaring, remorseless human machines. By contrast the medical students were warm and bursting with empathy and love."
- Aardwolf 14y agoBreaking news: people in a job about caring for people, care more for people than people in a job not about caring for people. Film at 11.
- MrMatters 14y agoA more interesting comparison if you're going to use medicine, IMO, is how it's the exact opposite for surgeons compared to doctors. If you believe The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton (which is the basis of this HuffPo article): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-barker/which-professions-have-the-most-psychopaths_b_2084246.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-barker/which-professions-... It makes sense because doctors require a high level of empathy whereas surgeons need to be better under pressure, be able to hold longer focus, etc. which are qualities of psychopaths.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoAlso, surgeons need to be able to cut people open without freaking out, possibly even enjoying it.
- roc 14y agoHow much of that can we ascribe to turnover though? Is it people who go into surgery care less? Or only people who care less can handle a career in surgery, where you typically have no bond to the patient, see many more people die (potentially due your own limitations or outright mistakes) and even when they live, you may see them for a follow-up exam or two, but not really ever again? There seems to be huge down-sides for an empathic surgeon and very little emotional up-side.
- sliverstorm 14y agoBang. This guy hit all the points I was going to make.
- meaty 14y agoFrom my experience, at least of the NHS, people in the job of caring for people don't care about people...
- kabdib 14y agoThis explains /everrrything/ about hardware engineers :-)
- sageikosa 14y agoSome people burn on the outside just enough to keep those around them warm. Some burn deep on the inside to heat the boilers that turn the turbines in their minds that move the world.
- dkhenry 14y agoWait everyone isn't cold and dead inside ? I thought I was just normal.
- nealabq 14y agoIt's perfectly normal. As is an insatiable hunger for brains.
- novalis 14y ago"Social Science" at its best. Too cold ?
- Cybrid 14y agoBullshit, if anything it should be the opposite, a surgeon that tends to get too emmotionally attached to their patients won't last long.
- fatalerrorx3 14y agoPlus surgeons deal with death on a more frequent basis than almost anyone else, if anything they're more likely to become numb to this, therefore becoming less emotional. Maybe this article is referring people who are still studying/in medical school whose goal it is to one day help people.
- darxius 14y agoI'm a computer engineer and I'm as cold as the hardware I support.
- nealabq 14y agoIt'd be interesting to study left-wing vs right-wing politicians. Are they all cold/calculating or warm/gooey inside? And how about tribalism? Do people (especially little kids) feel more empathy for people who look the same as they do?
- josephg 14y agoI'm not sure about how warm and gooey left-wing and right-wing people are, but there has been research in the roots of our respective morality systems: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.ht...
- jerf 14y agoI'd be interested in such serious research too, but so far everything I've ever seen on the topic has pretty clearly been "research", emphasized scare quotes, with predetermined results that just happen to precisely flatter the preconceived notions of the researchers, and I don't trust the results.
- rauljara 14y agoSomewhere in the icy depths of the pit I have for a soul, a cruel and callous feeling of detached amusement was conjured forth by the not at all hyperbolic writing I just read. I enjoyed the image of the zombie hordes of engineers spreading our deathly chill over these lands.
- zwieback 14y agoI'm a mechanical-electrical-software engineer. I can practically feel the two forces at war inside of me. I also studied optics, I wonder if that gives me some special insight?
- mctx 14y agoMechatronic? Or do you have three degrees?
- zwieback 14y agoNo, just an ME degree from Stuttgart but I focussed on controls and optics. I worked in machine vision for years and gradually drifted into software and firmware engineering with a lot of EE mixed in. I'm at HP now and they don't car what your degree is in.
- mctx 14y agoSounds like an interesting career! I'm working as a software engineer on a rail automation project at the moment, finishing my BEng in Mechatronics in mid 2013. May I ask what you work on at HP?
- edtechdev 14y ago"The computing students, once gender effects had been eliminated, actually came out basically the same as medical and caring types: they had turned out to be normal, warm, caring human beings. It was in fact the physics-based classical engineers who were dead inside." They also missed a key tidbit from the original news release. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130117084854.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130117084854.ht... The computing students (who were found to be as empathetic as others once controlling for gender) were taught using problem-based learning techniques - i.e., working in teams on real-world problems and projects. The other group was taught using traditional methods (lecture, rote memorization). "For computer engineering students, the differences were largely eliminated. The researchers have a theory about why: the computer engineering students are taught with PBL, problem-based learning, which is not the case for the applied physics students. Chato Rasoal believes this can influence the degree of empathy." Engineering (and math and science) professors need to improve how they teach. Here are 3 simple, research-backed tips for doing so: 1) incorporate everyday examples in your teaching, 2) use tools and techniques to improve student spatial visualizations skills, and 3) talk with and interact with your students (out of class and online): http://www.engageengineering.org/ http://www.engageengineering.org/
- Irregardless 14y agoFor any other Americans who were wondering what bicycle stunts might have to do with this research: > Noun. trick cyclist (plural trick cyclists) 1. (UK, slang) A psychiatrist My ability to detect British humor through text must be pretty poor, because it took several re-reads and a Googling of "trick cyclist" to finally notice the sarcasm/satire.
- arethuza 14y ago"ability to detect British humor" That would make an excellent browser plugin.
- sageikosa 14y agoMost likely it would route all process requests through a single queue.
- 1gor 14y agoThat's British "rhyming cockney". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang http://www.phespirit.info/cockney/slang_to_english.htm http://www.phespirit.info/cockney/slang_to_english.htm
- ntkachov 14y agoI'm pretty sure I'm 36.6 C and very much alive, thank you very much. I don't appreciate the "Engineers are ice cold" rhetoric. I can't tell if its satirizing the research or if they are just link baiting but this article seems to portray all engineers as terrible people.
- DanBC 14y ago> or if they are just link baiting The register is pretty awful rag and full of stupid annoying link-baity trash.
- brudgers 14y agoHere's the original scientific paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2012.708720 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2012.70... Sadly.
- antman 14y agoThis is plain wrong. I am sure that in my friends' minds I am a caring and compassionate person. In return I try to do my best preserving them in my basement.
- olliesaunders 14y agoSame old story: judging people by stereotypes isn’t such a great idea but remains tempting due to potential savings in cycles.
- RyanZAG 14y agoThere is a key fault common to every 'scientific' study done in this area - and there is an immense number of these studies done every year. The correct headline should be as follows: "Engineering students do not view themselves as caring as medical students do." Key point being that these are not studies done on 'action', but rather on 'cheap speech'. I can claim to be the most empathetic person alive, but will happily walk out the room and flip off a beggar asking for change while still believing I am empathetic as I may subconsciously not recognize the act. This is a huge problem with these kind of studies, and imho, these studies are fairly worthless. If you want to test this kind of thing, pretend to be a beggar outside each faculty and see which students actually help the most rather than say they will help the most.
- awakeasleep 14y agoI'm intrigued by the credence given to studies based on self-reported emotional states. For example, I've seen a ton of studies on happiness.. for example studies that report on the happiest countries. How do they control for cultural imperatives? I think we all know people who consider depression etc to be character flaws. I'd go as far as to say most people feel pressure to represent themselves as happy and content. Being honest about yourself is seriously difficult, even when you're the only one listening.
- Aardwolf 14y agoThe headline was something like "Engineers have no empathy and are cold and dead inside" and linked to a sensational article on theregister. Now the title is more moderate and it links to the scientific paper instead. What happened?
- klibertp 14y agoThis is the same paper that was linked in the article, so I think it's all good. Here is the link to The Register for curious (and lazy): http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/engineers_cold_and_dead_inside/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/engineers_cold_and_d...
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- numeromancer 14y agoWho cares what they think? Their importance, and the importance of most people, is an insignificant factor in the equation of life.
- 31reasons 14y agoIt would have been more interesting if it was something like this: "A study carried out by psychology researchers find that Engineers were sent by the machines from the future to build robots and make entire human race their slaves"
- Groxx 14y agoI'd be curious to see these questions. Somehow I suspect the engineers chose options that were 'coldly calculating' and lead to better end results - frankly, I'd prefer that in more doctors.
- drcube 14y ago> using a "well-established questionnaire" Self-reported "data" is useless.
- mping 14y agoI hit a paywall asking me 33 €.