Testing Testing

[andrewducker]

Further to the piece yesterday on Men and Women and their juicy brains, the Guardian has a test for both Emotional Quotience and Sytemising Quotience.

People will be completely unsurprised that my Systemic Quotience is in the 'average' band (although it's 38 compared to 30 for the average man and 24 for the average woman).

Nor will they be vastly surprised to discover that emotionally I register an 18 (42 for men, 47 for women) placing me into the Aspergers range of understanding.

I do think I underplayed both of them slightly, a danger of self-reporting tests as Heron pointed out. My main problem so far was that when answering questions like "It is hard for me to see why some things upset people so much", my answer is "Well, it used to be nigh impossible, until I read lots of books that explain to me how people work and now it's a lot easier because people really aren't that complicated." If the statement was "I instinctively know why people become upset at certain things" I could give a clear-cut answer of "No, not even slightly."

Comments

Quotience

[tulip-maria.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got a 59 for EQ and an average 24 for SQ. Though I probably could sort out the electrical wiring if it went wrong. I just wouldn't want to have to deal with the mess...

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I got a 44 for the EQ, which kind of surprises me, as that puts me under the average for a woman, and I think I tend to be pretty empathic. Blah.

I also got a 16 for SQ, which is way below average. But I don't know if that's really fair, since my interest in the system depends a lot on how pertinant it is to me. For example, I would definitely want to know the details of a computer I was buying, but I don't really care about a stereo. Because if the music quality is slightly higher or lower, I probably wouldn't notice, whereas if my computer is slower or won't run the newest games, I definitely will.

[andrewducker]

Well, exactly - you're only interested in systems as they apply to you directly, you're not interested in systems for their own sake.

Re:

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Hrm, yeah, I thought of that after I posted the comment. But hell, I don't like to fail tests, I need an excuse ;)

[allorin.livejournal.com]

My results are in my own journal - :+D

[seidl.livejournal.com]

As someone else who scored ... lower than he's happy with on the Empathy test, might you recommend any books you've found helpful?

[andrewducker]

I recommend Prometheus Rising, some books on Primate Psychology and the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy. Pay attention to the actions that people are displaying - remember that deep down they're just animals. Notice when they're scared and how they deal with that. How the Mind Works, Content and Consciousness and Figments of Reality are all good too.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

EQ 15
SQ 50


No surprise, really.

I do perform very poorly on text based tests of 'empathy'. Isn't it a daft way to administer such a test anway? Shouldn't it be live and face to face? Actual people do not find me quite as bad as the result sounds....