Questions for all artists and humanists out there

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From what I could gather, all tests and classifications across the internet have a bias towards the systemysing, geeky side. There are also a lot of aspies who are on the artsy/humanities side and they aren't supposed to have a male brain according to the EQ/SQ. However, this hypothesis is at odds with the results from the poll here which indicates that hardly any aspie has a balanced brain, let alone a female one.

So my questions are:

1.How do you score on the EQ/SQ test? go to personality-testing.info (not allowed to post link)

2.For artists, especially. How did/do your special interests or preservation symptoms manifest? I've only seen these having to do with activities related to gathering information.

1. I can't find it on the site you linked. I took the test awhile ago, might retest later, but not now. I scored low both on EQ and SQ (think my EQ might have been slightly higher, but I don't remember), but that's mainly because the questions were stupid and I interpret them very literally. Really the EQ/SQ theory is just stupid, neither concept really makes any sense, it's just forcing a bunch of different traits together and than using statistical witchcraft to try to associate it with gender when the truth is only some of the traits in either EQ or SQ are gender related. Anyway, I'm someone is both artistic and likes systems, it's a myth they are opposites. The truth is that convergent and divergent thinking are two different skills, and there is a WEAK negative correlation between the two, but to do much of anything you need some of both. The skills also have absolutely nothing to do with gender. Science and applied math needs more convergent thinking, art and pure math need more divergent thinking. Humanities as a study is a science, not an art.

Now, what art and humanities have in common is they are more people centered, while math and hard sciences are less people centered, and the only thing that can really be said for EQ/SQ that is gendered is women tend to be a bit more people centered than men. In that regard, autism more resembles a more masculine brain, but autism is hardly defined as less interest in people. All I can say on that matter is I like people, I also like many things that don't involve people. There are also many gendered traits that have absolutely nothing to do that, like men tend to be more action oriented, while woman are a bit more intellectual/emotional, in which case autistic traits more resemble feminine traits. What I think is really going on is there is a bias towards autistic people with more masculine traits as it's easier to see how less interest in people factors into the disorder than other things, the bias effects what people get diagnosed, which in turn effects studies about autism. It's a dynamic system. What can be said, however, is that some studies have found autistic men with more feminine brains than neurotypical control males, so that's proof enough that autism is not strictly a neurology categorized by an extreme male brain.

2. There is the gathering of information, than there organizing information, which is the artistic part. Sometimes that comes out as more systematic artwork:


But sometimes it's just art art, focused around an obsession, which is VERY common on the spectrum, especially with fan art. Like this:


The truth is there is no hard line between what is systematic or artistic. Take this for example:


You can snoop around my gallery for anything else you want to find. I've tried pretty much everything in the realm of art.
http://ganondox.deviantart.com/gallery/

Retook the test:
24 EQ, 17 SQ.

Pretty sure that was fairly similar to what I got last time. I still think the test is BS. Yes, I am diagnosed with aspergers. Also I'm biologically male, but have always considered myself fairly effeminate and often relate more to women than men.

Here is the link for others:
http://personality-testing.info/tests/EQSQ.php

I couldn't find the test on that site. Is this the one you mean? http://personality-testing.info/tests/EQSQ.php

My scores:
Empathizing Quotient: 26 (lower than average)
Systemizing Quotient: 28 (lower than average)

I was surprised about the SQ score, since I consider myself pretty high in systemizing. I thought there was a bit of gender bias in favor of stereotypically masculine interests (mechanics, railways, etc.). Females can be very systemizing in their interests too. When I was little, I had all my toy animals sorted by species, and they all had detailed biographies. I wrote reports on microbes and insects that I studied with dad's microscope. If I went to the movies, I would give my parents a detailed report on everything that happened.

I have seven bookshelves of books, sorted by subject, plus lots of collections (comics, seashells, art supplies, various seeds and nuts to draw, beads). I studied commercial art in school AND biology (I have two degrees). I love both art and science, especially biology, and I take a systemizing approach to both. My art style is very realistic and detailed to the point of being a bit fiddly. I like to draw animals, plants, landscapes, and people wearing historical or foreign costumes.

I make a living as a website designer (another systemizing sort of job) but my dream job would be as a biological illustrator, creating drawings for a guidebook on plants or animals. I also like to paint oil paintings with a lot of symbolism or surrealism, especially spiritual or psychological symbolism, since one of my interests is visual symbolism, dreams, and folklore. (e.g., dogs symbolizing fidelity, Ophelia's speech on the language of flowers)

I agree the SQ chart is biased towards masculine interests, if it actually fit any sort of abstract notion of "systemizing" I'm sure I'd have scored much higher, I just don't care about those things they talk about. I also don't think men are actually any better at systemizing than women are, it's just a bias in the questions. I think the only reason for correlation aside from gender bias is that if someone is not as good with people, they're devote a bit more time into systematizing other things (and also just autistic people might have that bias for other reasons, but it has nothing to do with gender).

I agree. I think Baron-Cohen's "male brain" theory makes too many assumptions about what "masculine" and "feminine" are (I'm a woman, and can be a bit butch or fairly girly, depending on circumstances). It doesn't make allowances for cultural and gender differences, or people whose gender expression is non-binary or less traditional.

1. I abandoned the test after a few minutes because the questions were too sweeping and black-and-white, it wasn't possible to answer any of them right, and if it's OK to give wrong answers, I could have got any result I wanted. Baron-Cohen's always doing that.

2. My art work is plagued by a tendency to get sucked into geeky stuff, but it doesn't kill it completely.

I struggled with the empathy questions because I really don't know how well I'm reading people (e.g., telling if they are bored). Which I guess is a good measure of poor empathy in itself. The only question is: am I bad at it, or really bad at it?

Right, he didn't provide a "don't know" or "yes and no" button. But the result would have been the same, I'd have checked that for practically all the questions, and discovered that the test didn't know my EQ quotient. There's got to be a better test somewhere.

Yeah, I think my main issue isn't that I can't do any of these things, but I lack any confidence in it, so if I'm not sure I just say no.

I guess that's the problem with self-assessment. I see myself as socially inept, especially when I'm down, but some folks I know seem to think I often do quite well, and not just quite well for an Aspie, and I think there may be something in it. Social adeptness is so relative.

I don't fit your specification really, since I have both scientific and humanistic interests, but in that respect, I do match the more stereotypically aspie outlook. I have strong interests in literature, for example, but they are definitely follow the systematizing approach: source analysis, poetic meter, historical allusions, language use, etc. In other words, I don't care what the White Whale "means," but I think it's very interesting to ask what the source of the character was,* and how he was described linguistically or historically.

So that's my non-answer answer.

*Mocha Dick

The extreme male brain hypothesis has been used as a default explanation for why autism is supposedly four times more prevalent in males than in females, and why people with autism can excel in disciplines such as maths and engineering.

Simon Baron-Cohen has a tendency to view his theories as established fact by ignoring variables at odds with his conclusions. For example, we don't know if the cited male:female ratio of incidence is accurate, because we don't have good measures for assessing women on the spectrum. Most of the basic research has been done on male dominant samples and in many cases, the samples excluded females altogether.

It may be that the way ASD is currently described and recognised is so reductionist compared to what ASD diversity actually is, that in the future academic rubbish bins will be overflowing when better forms of identification become available. I think this will happen.

Meantime Baron-Cohen will continue to defend his opinions as definitive fact, though from my perspective all he has done is muddy the waters even more. People on the spectrum can and do succeed at disciplines like maths and engineering, perhaps at a greater rate than NTs, though they seem to be exceptional rather than representative, even within the ASD community.

This could be due to a number of confounding variables - eg women not being sufficiently encouraged to pursue STEM careers for example - but we just don't know, and nor does Baron-Cohen, though he is very committed to his own opinions which IMO have been quite unhelpful overall. I think he has promoted myths to embellish his own career, knowingly or not, and academia is certainly not immunised from that tendency.

Thank you all for your replies. While I know the test is strongly biased towards the male systemysing, it's curious how the women on here tend to score as having a male brain. I cannot post the link but the title of the topic is Empathising Quotient and Systemising Quotient (EQ SQ) tests .

I think it's because the tests conclusion that scoring a certain way on it means you have a male or female brain is utter BS. Again, most traits that actually correspond with sexual dimorphism aren't even on that quiz. But anyway, yes, there is a trend for women on the autistic spectrum to have somewhat more masculinized brains than control women, but I'd hardly equate that to having a male brain, and I think that reason for the trend is mainly diagnostic bias against more feminine women on the spectrum.

It doesn't even matter whether the brain is male or female. What is important is that the results and comments here are consistent with the theory that aspies are good systemysers( not necessarily in the way put forward by Baron Cohen) and poor empathisers.

I would be very interested to know how pyschologysts/psychiatrist score since the profession requires that they are natural empathisers.