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tylikhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/page/0,12983,937443,00.html
My EQ score was 65, my SQ score was 57.
Which means that I'm apparently a freak of nature (who would have thunk it?) -- almost no women are supposed have EQs in that range, and there's some correlation between men with EQs in that range and Asperger's. However, my higher than average empathy score seems to make that unlikely as they figure things.
I think it's one of the more interesting tests I've seen, but I think it's essentially flawed.
There were items like (exact wording may be off):
"I feel comfortable striking up a conversation with someone I've just met."
on the systemizing test, and questions like:
"Before making a decision I am careful to weigh pros and cons."
on the empathy test. I can't see, at least yet, how these test for either quality they purportedly measure.
While obviously I don't have information on all the criteria they used to choose their questions, I get at least the impression that to some extent they are defining each quality at least in part as the lack of the other quality. I personally don't see that these qualities need to be in conflict with eachother at all, but I find myself wondering to what extent conflict was artificially injected by the test creators.
Reading the systemizing section was actually kind of eerie, though... I am obsesessed, or at least very interested with details of structure and construction. I think I would have scored rather higher in that section were there not a number of questions aimed at social discomfort. (Lucky me, while I am not entirely without alienation issues, they tend to show in rather closer personal relationships than general social situations.)
Similarly, were I designing such a test, I think I would make a more careful distinction between the extent to which you can perceive and sympathize with a person's reactions, and the extent to which these perceptions compell you to action. That one is highly empathic in the perceptive sense doesn't mean they can't make decisions based on other criteria as well. I also tend to think that an interest in deducing abstract rules for social interactions might point towards a high systemizing quotient, but not a low empathy per se. (Though perhaps one could learn something by evaluating the quality of the abstract rules produced.)
My EQ score was 65, my SQ score was 57.
Which means that I'm apparently a freak of nature (who would have thunk it?) -- almost no women are supposed have EQs in that range, and there's some correlation between men with EQs in that range and Asperger's. However, my higher than average empathy score seems to make that unlikely as they figure things.
I think it's one of the more interesting tests I've seen, but I think it's essentially flawed.
There were items like (exact wording may be off):
"I feel comfortable striking up a conversation with someone I've just met."
on the systemizing test, and questions like:
"Before making a decision I am careful to weigh pros and cons."
on the empathy test. I can't see, at least yet, how these test for either quality they purportedly measure.
While obviously I don't have information on all the criteria they used to choose their questions, I get at least the impression that to some extent they are defining each quality at least in part as the lack of the other quality. I personally don't see that these qualities need to be in conflict with eachother at all, but I find myself wondering to what extent conflict was artificially injected by the test creators.
Reading the systemizing section was actually kind of eerie, though... I am obsesessed, or at least very interested with details of structure and construction. I think I would have scored rather higher in that section were there not a number of questions aimed at social discomfort. (Lucky me, while I am not entirely without alienation issues, they tend to show in rather closer personal relationships than general social situations.)
Similarly, were I designing such a test, I think I would make a more careful distinction between the extent to which you can perceive and sympathize with a person's reactions, and the extent to which these perceptions compell you to action. That one is highly empathic in the perceptive sense doesn't mean they can't make decisions based on other criteria as well. I also tend to think that an interest in deducing abstract rules for social interactions might point towards a high systemizing quotient, but not a low empathy per se. (Though perhaps one could learn something by evaluating the quality of the abstract rules produced.)
