I thought this was a very interesting piece, talking about the latest developments in Simon Baron-Cohen’s research (from which, as you know, we derive our EQSQ personality tests). The basic hypothesis is that there is a spectrum of brain types, from the female, or empathic, to the male, or systemizing. Autism is an extreme form of that male brain type. It’s again part of the hypothesis that exposure to foetal testosterone is what causes these brain types. This is how we can have ( as we do, some 17% of women) wit the male brain type and vice versa, men with the female. Our personality tests are designed to help you work out where you are on this spectrum and thus aid in your decisions about what to study, which career to go for.

Excellent, but the thing about science is that once you have a hypothesis, you are supposed to go looking for evidence that disproves it. No, not proves it, you want to try and prove your idea wrong. If you can’t prove that it’s wrong then you can continue to think (but keep testing!) that it’s correct.

This is exactly what Baron Cohen has done. He’s found an interesting method of testing whether foetal testosterone does indeed have this effect on personality and brain types. By looking at the testosterone levels in amniocentesis samples and then following up the children until the age of 6 he’s been able to show that, yes, just as the hypothesis predicts, those with high levels do indeed have those male brain personality traits. This holds true for both men and women.

Now, as I say, you’re supposed to keep testing your idea. So now he’s going to examine a database of 90,000 such test results. The earlier experiment only had 235 people in it and given that autism spectrum diagnosis is one in a hundred or so, this isn’t enough to give any statistically relevant answers about autism. But in one of 90,000, there will indeed be autistic children, so he’ll be able to study the foetal testosterone levels of those that we do know have autism.

This is an excellent piece in The Atlantic and it speaks directly to the whole subject we cover here and our EQSQ personality tests. To what extent are the things that we can do (or not) the result of innate talents and how much are to do with experience? Further, how much of said experience is a cultural matter and how much reflects again those innate differences between people?

It’s been a commonplace of the feminist movement (or, more accurately, the militant wing) that all of the observable differences between men and women (other than the most basically biological) are a result of cultural impositions: there’s no innate difference in talent for one thing or another between men and women. The Atlantic piece looks at this through the concept of throwing a ball like a girl. Now the thing is that there’s no relevant difference between the arms or shoulders of men and women, so why is it that men are more likely to have a strong and direct throw? The answer being that it is indeed learned behavior and it’s something that men tend to learn and women don’t. Take a right handed man and ask him to throw with his left and he too will “throw like a girl”.

So does this mean that all such differences are simply cultural? No, most certainly not. For there are other physical differences between men and women which are important. Indeed, this is the whole idea between our EQSQ personality tests. That on average, female brains have more of certain attributes than male ones do and vice versa. That there might also be cultural pressures over and above this is true, as it most certainly was until recently, but by taking the tests you can discover which brain type you have and then seek the career and employment which will best use those talents, or the training that you need to compensate perhaps.