Is "Engineer personality type" a folk term for Asp

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Here's an old military engineers drinking song.

Godiva was a lady who through Coventry did ride--
To show to all the villagers her fine and lily-white hide--
The most observant villager, an engineer of course--
Was the only one to notice that Godiva rode a horse-- *

That sure sounds like Aspergers to me and I've heard the term used other times too.




*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godiva%27s_Hymn

Wasn't there once a theory that said, if engineers get children, these tend to be more often autistic children than those of non-engineers?
It could be that engineers must have autistic traits in some form (or be autistic themselves) in order to "function properly". Maybe engineers just have to be neurologically different?

Fun-fact: My parents are engineers, so was my grandfather, I and my mother both think that she might be autistic as well since she has quite a fair amount of traits- and my brother is currently on his way to become an engineer himself and is not excluded from that scheme either since he has AD(H)D (and also some aspie traits). Only my father seems somewhat normal.

Sounds more like an asexual. Anybody else, provided they were attracted to women and probably even if they weren't, wouldn't notice much else but the pretty lady without her clothes on!

The intellectual, introverted, detail-oriented type of personality may often be found in Aspies, but many Aspies aren't that way. And quite a few NTs are.

So... maybe someone with an "engineer personality" is a little more likely to be an Aspie than the general population.

If autism makes it easier to focus on ideas and small details, then it would seem natural that autistics would develop that kind of personality more often than usual.

But I don't think "engineer personality" is synonymous with Aspie, because nerdy simply doesn't equal Aspie, and autism is a disability that affects personality, not simply a personality type.

Or it could just be that more engineers are INTP's and INTJ's.

Totally forgot about that!
Many aspies seem to be INTJ as well at least (somewhere here on WP, there is a poll about that topic).

Sound like my family.

One grandfather was a brilliant mathematician and let his wife handle most people skills though he was able to make it clear how much he loved his family.

My other grandfather rarely said more than three words at a time (in retrospect it bordered on selective mutism) but was shrewd and provided safe harbor to any family member in need.

Some how all their kids ended up being NT's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ

"INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities"

Is that right ?

AS people focus on the big picture rather than details ?

AS people do tend to have special interests, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't be generalists. Actually, most AS people I've got to know very well often fit well the original definition of an intellectual (I mean in the sense it was first used amongst academics and philosophers in particular, in France and England), that of someone who has both exceptional breadth and depth of knowledge on a particular topic. I'm not sure whether or not the way in which we engage in our special interests has been stereotyped to a certain extent, or we really do on average tend to think of them like we're on the show Jeopardy.

Furthermore, that particular area of typology is the most blurry because everyone relies on both perception and judgment. Just because I am an INTP, it doesn't mean that I am skewed all that hard against judgment, or even that I don't come to fairly solid conclusions because I have this predisposition towards perception. Actually in my case it just means that I have a stringent and slow process. Instead of going for breadth first and forming a judgment, I tick off detail after detail for years and eventually digest it. The two processes really aren't mutually exclusive and it doesn't surprise me when I see someone on the spectrum who has serious breadth of knowledge on a subject.

Yes, that's the Silicon Valley effect. In populations of engineers, autism is more common among their children.

Yes, engineers have sub-clinical autistic traits at a higher rate than the general population. Most aren't actually autistic (though a few are--and engineering can be a rather autistic-friendly environment if the co-workers and boss are okay with your awkwardness).

Autism isn't just one gene that you either have or don't have--it's more like, if you have enough traits, and they're strong enough, they start to interfere with your being able to do what society expects of you. Add two parents with mild autistic traits, and their child is more likely to have diagnosable autism.

What I find is that my brother is a master Engineer and a MENSA member and my father is a master of Computer Networking, yet *I* have the Engineers personality. He even forwarded me an article on Aspergers and how many Engineers might have it and said "hey, that's you!" to which we both laughed: it sure is, right down to the refusal to eat foods that touch each other.

Well, I AM an engineer, I also qualifications in Statistics and I can see the flaw in your argument.

Some aspies are engineers, this does not mean that all aspies are engineers. Some engineers are aspies but not all engineers have AS. Cause does not equal effect.

As for me, my father worked in local government and my mother (before she had kids) worked in an insurance office. My grandfather however was a Naval Draftsman in the shipyard drawing office and from what my mother said about him he certainly was an aspie even though it hadn't been discovered yet.

Maybe it was the fact that he's an engineer, and engineers in general see more detail don't they? They would not make great engineers otherwise

I am the only engineer and intellectual in my entire family. I am also the only one with aspergers as well. So does aspergers and engineering go hand in hand? Not for sure but I have no problem conceptualizing any electrical or mechanical engineering process in my head and trying to explain that conceptualizing process to other engineers (mostly NT?) seems to be meant with confusion and misunderstanding. So from my personal experience, I would have to say yes, aspergers and engineering do go hand in hand.

While many engineers may be Aspies and aspects of Asperger's may be advantageous to engineers, that doesn't mean that all Aspies are "engineer personalities". Some of us, myself included, aren't even that good with math and computers. While we all have our difficulties in social interaction and our detail-orientation among other things in common, we are otherwise vary in our neural wiring. Temple Grandin separates everyone on the spectrum into three patterns of thinking: Pattern thinkers); Visual thinkers; and Word/Fact Thinkers. I think even this is too simplistic, but it's a start at understanding the differences among ourselves. Pattern thinkers are going to excel with numbers and scientific ways of thinking. Visual thinkers such as Grandin herself think in pictures and have an enhanced ability for visual insight and graphic representation. Word/Fact thinkers think verbally. I fall into the latter category. I think in words and have an aptitude towards, though no savant capability, absorbing facts and categorizing the world on a knowledge grid, which made me a great librarian in the technical aspects of the job (the social niceties were my downfall).

This is the popular theory of Simon Baron Cohen and pop psychology in general.
Engineers = Extreme systemizers = autism spectrum/edge of the autism spectrum

But there is something very wrong with this theory. Half the characteristics of autism involve rigid concrete thinking, repetitive behaviour, obsession with facts rather than meaning, and rigid routines. This is nothing like engineers. To be a good engineer you need to be totally abstract, constantly come up with new solutions and ways of doing things, and think outside of the box.
So you really cannot call Aspergers a more extreme version of an engineer. Its seems more like an extreme version of a bus driver from where I'm sitting.

But who knows. Maybe SBC is right. Maybe engineers are very Aspergery, and do tend to fade into the autism spectrum. Research certainly shows they have double the rate of autistic children than the general population. In that case the diagnostic criteria need a serious rewrite to reflect this.

I don't think Simon Baron-Cohen is really getting to the root of things. It's like he's taking this one feature of autism that's more common on the spectrum, and then assuming that it must be the core feature--except that many autistics don't have it, and many NTs do. Saying that "autistics have engineer personalities" is like saying that "men are taller than women"--you have to say it with the understanding that the six-foot-tall women and the five-foot-tall men totally exist and are neither invisible nor irrelevant.

I won't deny that it's a trait found among autistics at a rate greater than chance, though. SBC is right to take note of it. And besides, there's plenty we don't know about autism; it's natural that people will get it wrong at first, and gradually get closer and closer to the right answer as we find more information. Theories like "extreme systemizing brain" are a heck of a lot better than "it's a variant of schizophrenia" or "it comes from maternal neglect." We'll get there eventually, so long as we keep asking questions.