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The empathizing–systemizing (E–S) theory suggests that people may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions: empathizing (E) and systemizing (S). It measures a person's strength of interest in empathy (the ability to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions); and a person's strength of interest in systems (in terms of the drive to analyse or construct them). According to the originator of the hypothesis, Simon Baron-Cohen, the E-S theory has been tested using the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ), developed by him and colleagues, and generates five different 'brain types' depending on the presence or absence of discrepancies between their scores on E or S. E-S profiles show reliable sex differences in the general population (more females showing the profile E>S and more males showing the profile S>E).〔Baron-Cohen, S, Knickmeyer, R, & Belmonte, M (2005) Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. ''Science'', 310, 819-823.〕 Baron-Cohen and associates say the E-S theory is a better predictor of who chooses STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects than gender is.〔Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S, & Wheelwright, S, (2007) Cognitive style predicts entry into physical sciences and humanities: Questionnaire and performance tests of empathy and systemizing. Learning and Individual Differences, 17, 260-268.〕 The E-S theory has been extended into the 'Extreme Male Brain' (EMB) theory of autism and Asperger syndrome, which are associated in the E-S theory with below-average empathy and average or above-average systemizing. Baron-Cohen's studies and theory have been questioned on multiple grounds.〔〔 The overrepresentation of engineers could depend on a sampling bias, and analyses of autism have ''not'' found that autism clustered preferentially around areas rich in IT industry.〔Van Meter, K. C. et al. (2010) Geographic distribution of autism in California: a retrospective birth cohort analysis. Autism Res. 3, 19-29 (easy to understand article )〕 ==History== E-S theory was developed by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen as a major reconceptualization of cognitive sex differences in the general population and in an effort to understand why the cognitive difficulties in autism appeared to lie in domains in which he says on average females outperformed males and why cognitive strengths in autism appeared to lie in domains in which on average males outperformed females. He had previously proposed the mind-blindness theory in 1985, which argued that children with autism are delayed in their development of a theory of mind, that is, the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of themselves or others. Baron-Cohen says a strength of this theory lies in its power to explain one of the core features of autism (the social and communication difficulties), but a limitation of the mindblindness theory is that it ignored the other main domain in autism (unusually narrow interests and highly repetitive behaviors, also called 'resistance to change or need for sameness'). To address this, Baron-Cohen put forward the E-S theory.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Empathizing–systemizing theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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